MEANINGMAKER

storytelling

  • the next big thing

    Yesterday I had lunch with a woman who, last year, walked away from a 25‑year corporate career – just a few years shy of the golden pension so many of us hang on for. She realized she didn’t have any… Continue reading

  • a mirror in the desert

    By some strange twist of fate, my kids started their lives perched in Justin Bieber’s old high chair whenever they stayed at my parents’ house for the weekend. It was a classic ’70s vinyl number – sturdy, a little scuffed,… Continue reading

  • 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 flagat Stonewall,the birthplace of belonging,like lowering a clothcould lower a people. As if a history that rosefrom riot and refusalcould be dimmed,could be drowned,could be undone,by stripping its colours from the sky. She whispered as… Continue reading

  • lift what you can

    My mother taught me to shovel snowthe way I imaginesome 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 the hush of the world,the night itself… 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— a path to my mother.… 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, like someone had shaken a box of all my pieces and let them fall. A scatter of life… 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