MEANINGMAKER

storytelling

  • this too shall pass

    A small poem. A simple one. This too shall pass: we say it like a spell — like it will hurry hard things along. But the good things pass too. The ease. The sweetness. The precious small things we’ve pressed… Continue reading

  • act your age

    I read an article yesterday about Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow — women who are stunning, powerful, and who happen to be surrounded by every tool modern beauty culture can offer. But the article warned that even they… Continue reading

  • all the days we did not live

    I decided to walk to work this morning. Unusual for me in the winter. On my way, I happened to see an unhoused woman curled up on the cold sidewalk on the other side of the street, surrounded by the… Continue reading

  • the trouble with erasure

    They took down the Pride flag at Stonewall, the birthplace of belonging, as if lowering a cloth could lower a people. As if a history that rose from riot and refusal could be dimmed, could be drowned, could be undone,… Continue reading

  • lift what you can

    My mother taught me  to shovel snow the way I imagine some mothers teach prayer – patient, shoulder to shoulder. She’d come home from a long day, and say: Come on, let’s go. Out into the dark we went, into… Continue reading

  • new year’s eve 1975

    She slipped the deep blue coat from the hanger. The fur collar brushed her cheek, a brief vanishing softness. I watched from my doorway, a child awake when I shouldn’t have been, drawn by the thin slice of light —… Continue reading

  • the dinner party

    I had dinner with all 55 of myself last night. It was a long table and we sat together, arranged without intention, as if someone had shaken a box of all my pieces and let them fall. A scatter of… Continue reading

  • a small good thing

    Last night, just before I fell asleep with my Airpods still in, I listened to a short TED Talk about what it means to keep on creating in a world that feels like it’s on fire. Every one of us… Continue reading

  • at the threshold

    A lone mourning dove took up residence on our front doorstep this morning. She’s calm as a guest who knows she’s expected, though she wasn’t. A round little thing, soft-bellied and unbothered, as if she’s just content to be content… Continue reading

  • 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