That I Would Be Free

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

  • The Journey of the Warrior

    It’s Tuesday morning.  I wake up early, probably 20 minutes before little one starts chant-singing, Mommy-Mommy-Mommy.  I lay in bed watching the gray dawn through my bedroom curtains.  I’m thinking about my journal session the night before.  There are many days when I write and it doesn’t amount to much.  But sometimes, when I’m really Read More

  • Please don’t ask if it’s amicable!

    So now that you understand how ABSURD the amicable question is, let me offer some suggestions of what might be more helpful to someone who is facing or recently undergone divorce. Read More

  • Be bad at ANYTHING

    There’s an unspoken rule, once you reach real adulthood (I’m not talking age 18—I mean the time in life when you can really do you) that you should only do things you are good at. That rule is silly. And it sucks. Literally it sucks all the fun out of life. Read More

  • You can make anything!

    Sometimes creativity feels like a crushing chore, but when I think about Ruby it feels more an attitude. An irrepressible impulse that played out in the bread she baked, the cows she milked, the clothing she sewed, the baskets she constructed, the beets she hoed, and the rocks she laid. Her mosaics matter enormously and… Read More

  • All things are true

    A few weeks ago, after I wrote the post How to start feeling, I asked my therapist, “Do we ever stop numbing?  I mean, is there some transcendental state that is attainable where we never numb our feelings again?  Is that even possible?  Is even that the goal?”   I’m not going to try to Read More

  • Waking up

    I’m just waking up this morning.  I heard River get up out of bed and walk through the house.  Then he climbed back into bed, ate a little dry cereal from the bowl he requested last night and he’s been quiet for a while now.  I have been mulling over this question of how to Read More

  • The Marco Polo Prayer

    Sometimes I can’t feel god.  I used to think this was because of something I had done.  That god had withdrawn from me.  I learned in church that god cannot dwell in unholy places so I assumed if I couldn’t feel god then something unholy was going on inside of me.  I felt shame about Read More

  • Run in the desert under a starry sky

    I’m sitting on my couch listening to R do his howling cry of bedtime loneliness interspersed with plunking on the alligator xylophone.  It’s 9:32pm.  He’s normally in bed an hour earlier but we are coming off of a travel weekend which included strange sleep schedules and a long nap on the car ride home—on top Read More

  • How to start feeling

    I grew up in a house with four women which meant there was a lot of estrogen going around.  We were pretty adept at late-night sessions, hashing out the latest crises in our lives, letting our advice spill over into the wee hours when judgment for such things is waning and emotions are running high.  Read More

  • Day 8: The call is inside me

    I wanted to write this post immediately on returning from Hawaii, but for some reason, I couldn’t.  Some things need a little time to settle.  On our last day, Cass and I woke up early, packed up our things and drove with the top down to Pu’uhonua O Honaunau.  It’s a national historic park, south Read More