That I Would Be Free

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

  • Be.

    Rest in cool water.  Dance in flame.  Lick up morsels lobbed onto my plate.  I was born in ease,  In the universe, In myself. Hung the world round my neck, Its weight pulling nearer, nearer to the floor. Stop that.  Let it clatter on the floorboards. Skip into the mud forest. Find a shelf fungus, Read More

  • Hello, Righteous Rant

    Learning to be conscious through a travel delay in a pandemic year, while mercury is in retrograde. Read More

  • Happiness: The Basics

    You know, Michelle’s not happy. A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend who recently went through divorce. She mentioned that in the course of her separation process, someone we both know, pointed to me and my situation and said THAT. First, WTF. How does someone in another state who I talk to Read More

  • Conversion

    I was thinking about the boom box at Baskin Robbins the other day. The tinny sound of Mix 105.5 floating over the trickle of water through the scoop basins and the chorus hum of freezers. I can’t hear a Billy Idol song without thinking of that boom box (was every night 80s night?). Natalie Imbruglia, Read More

  • Boyfriends

    A year ago this month, my then-boyfriend of four or five months abruptly broke up with me with little explanation. And he did it in sort of an angry way, four days after my grandpa passed away. I went to the funeral devastated. I went to work. I took my son to swimming lessons. I Read More

  • The thorns we keep

    Do you, my dear reader, have a story you can put down? It’s just a story, after all. Read More

  • I don’t know.

    Why fall feels hopeful. Read More

  • What am I doing with my life!?!

    There’s a lot of important things happening in the world right now. I’m not going to type the words to explain what those are. I think we all get it. But I thought for this Labor Day weekend, we could all use a break from the ill, illogical and insane. So here are a few Read More

  • I shrug too.

    Note: Thankfully I was not involved in the pictured car fire, except that I drove by it on the interstate near Las Vegas and I can’t imagine how the people who had to jump from their burning car felt, on top of everything already going on this year. Right now I’m sitting on the end Read More

  • Green Parrots, Rats, Dogs and Boys

    In my neighborhood are a pair of wild, green parrots. If you go for a walk around sunset you can see them flying high overhead, chattering back and forth to each other. They have only visited my yard once, to my knowledge. Shortly after I bought the house, my sister came to help me move. Read More