MEANINGMAKER

storytelling

  • a gift in the cold

    Can we just talk about how the rain froze on the windshield this morning for a minute? Like a tiny murmuration of starlings – that breathtaking, swirling ballet you sometimes see those delicate birds perform by the hundreds in the… Continue reading

  • on writing and angels

    I’m channeling my 85-year-old dad here with the “if I had a nickel for every time” line, but truly – if I did have a nickel for every good thing that has come into my life because of my writing,… Continue reading

  • we are so lightly here

    Today, my phone’s photo app offered me a montage it called “Looking Back.” I usually ignore those compilations, but this morning I opened it as the downtown blurred past outside the train’s window, on my way to work. There, among… Continue reading

  • sunday school

    “I guess I feel that we should remember the deep emotions that prompt the urge to marry the next time we hear that marriage needs to be defended against people who want to participate in it. The last thing any marriage needs… Continue reading

  • public relations

    one day PR won’t just be damage control in a designer suit, a photo op with a forgiveness filter. the art of writing apology in 12 point helvetica bold, like empathy in a swag bag. we are rapidly approaching a… Continue reading

  • altitude

    I was up way too early this morning. On my way to the train, also way too early, I saw this worker standing at the edge of a condo tower under construction a block from our house. I could never… Continue reading

  • the mathematics of me

    Twice in the last week, I’ve dreamed of the Fibonacci sequence. I don’t remember either dream – only that in the second dream, I kept reminding myself that I had to remember those words when I woke up. Of course,… Continue reading

  • the second coming

    I am a mother. A wife. A daughter. The weight of love. The truth once buried beneath duty. The heart that has wondered if love is enough. I am all wonder, whimsy, magic, and therapy. The unshaken certainty that even… Continue reading

  • silent witness

    The house we live in is over 90 years old. Sometime in the early 1930s, as a shaken city emerged from the Depression and the earliest electric streetcars were still rolling up and down King Street a block away, she… Continue reading

  • creative writing class

    If we taught the five love languages in school like we teach French or German. If we learned in Kindergarten that the true measure of a life well-lived isn’t in our grand accomplishments, but in the small courageous acts of… Continue reading