MEANINGMAKER

storytelling

  • everything beautiful

    This morning, on the first day of Pride, I stood on the corner of a busy downtown street with a throng of staff, watching the flags be raised for Pride Month and Indigenous History Month. And I had a brief… Continue reading

  • they were always golden

    I got to hold babies and pet all the dogs. I got to fold warm laundry. Blow out birthday candles. Take naps. I got to walk down ordinary streets and notice beautiful things. Flower gardens. A child drawing galaxies in… Continue reading

  • dear sugar

    Some of you know Cheryl Strayed as the writer behind Wild, but before that she wrote an anonymous advice column called Dear Sugar — a place where people brought their hardest, most tangled truths, and Sugar met them with a… Continue reading

  • 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

  • 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

  • definition

    Woke /wohk/(adjective.) The moment a person stands uprightin the full measure of their seeing.As in what Pope Leo said:To be called woke in a world that sleepsthrough sufferingis no insult. Or,the strange conditionin which noticing the worldis treated as more… 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

  • 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