That I Would Be Free

Essays on identity, transition and quietly building a life that fits.

  • Yes.

    (After Rachel Greenburg) Yes to the way all days basically start out the same,Yes to bed sheets and stretches, Yes to the chaos, a body laying  down her perpetual spring, Yes to the stowed soup still in its pot,Yes to the echo, a murmur from  his father’s lips, Yes to the unrelenting garden,Yes to unruly puzzle Read More

  • The Secret to Rooted Behavior Change

    I’m stagnating.  That thought terrifies me. It’s almost April. I’m almost to the deadline I gave myself for finishing my first draft. And I won’t meet it. A part of me is really frustrated about this. I can tell this is a younger part, one that formed in my late teens or early 20s. But Read More

  • Hello from the crucible of reinvention!

    If you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve been watching me experience a serious reinvention of self over the past several years. The past two years, I’ve been quieter on social media, and I haven’t been blogging. This was due in part to being blocked creatively, and in part due to healing (maybe those two things travel together Read More

  • How to Build Resilience to Depression

    I wrote this piece for the local newspaper! As we’ve attempted to settle into post-pandemic life, the mental health crisis continues to rage. According to a review by Boston University School of Public Health, rates of depression in the United States have risen from 9 percent, pre-pandemic, to 33 percent in 2021.  With depression affecting Read More

  • My Wish For 2023

    Last Fall I read My Side of the Mountain to River. It’s a novel about a boy who leaves the city to make a home in the woods on the site of his great-great grandfather’s failed farm. He builds a shelter by burning out the trunk of a great hemlock tree and he steals a Read More

  • Putting Spark to the Cold Ground

    I once spent a night alone in a biologist’s cabin in Garden Valley, Idaho. It was January and the entire valley was padded with a foot of powdery snow.  I was doing a clinical rotation in that small town and the doctor I worked with had an arrangement with the family that owned this cabin, Read More

  • Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

    It’s 10:00pm and I’m finding myself doom scrolling the furniture section of the Anthropologie app. Doom scrolling because, what urgent need have I for an overpriced arm chair at this hour, when I should be sinking into bed under the ceiling fan’s gentle blow with my favorite audiobook humming me to sleep. All that the Read More

  • Week 11: Recovering A Sense of Autonomy

    Are your kids back in school yet? R doesn’t start until this Monday, but I’m already sorting through emails and filling out forms—even as I’m writing this I’m getting interrupted! And so it begins… (cue ominous Lord of the Rings music).  I’ve had a few people comment on my quantity of writing. How do you Read More

  • Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

    [If you are just joining in, we are going through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron “a spiritual path to higher creativity”….Feel free to jump in or start back at the beginning. There are posts for each week (chapter)!] I was born under a full moon in Aries. giving me a deep sense of internal Read More

  • Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion

    [If you are just joining in, this is a book by Julia Cameron “a spiritual path to higher creativity”….Feel free to jump in or start back at the beginning. There are posts for each week (chapter)!] Today marks the start of the last month of Summer of Creativity. I hope you are seeing some changes Read More