I’m in the last tenths of the journey, looking beyond the finish line to new ways keep moving after SOMETHING BETTER.
Read moreThe Home Stretch
Image credit: Miguel A Amutio @amutiomi via Unsplash
Remembering Dooce, my first internet friend
I did not know Heather Armstrong, but she will always hold a special place in my heart and in the narrative of my parenting journey.
I started following dooce.com in 2005, after the birth of my daughter. Heather had given birth to her first child a year prior, and her blog posts about the new, bewildering world of parenting made me feel as though I had a wise friend by my side during moments when I could have felt all alone.
I read her blog regularly in those early years. I went to her 2009 signing of IT SUCKED AND THEN I CRIED, her book about motherhood and postpartum depression. Later, I fell away from reading her work after we both had our second children and, as often happens, our paths and experiences diverged.
Heather came back into my orbit in 2019 with her release of THE VALEDICTORIAN OF BEING DEAD, a chronicle of her depression and treatment. The audiobook, which Heather narrates, was told in her signature self-deprecating and unflinchingly honest style.
Over the last 4 years, I would occasionally visit her website to see what she was up to; in fact, I was probably due for my quarterly check-in. I was devastated yesterday upon learning she had passed away. To me, her work and her influence made her seem larger than life, indelible, permanent.
Be at peace, Heather. Your warmth and wit lives on in your beloved daughters, and in the millions of lives you unknowingly touched.
Paris in Puce: The Greatest 80s PROM Movie
Do you remember your Prom? (and if you do, did you do it wrong?)
Read moreThe Journey to Letting Go
Photo credit: Kenny Eliason @neonbrand via Unsplash
One of my fellow 2023 debuts recently posted on IG about how publishing is the process of making “my” book “yours,” and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Read moreBeverly Cleary, Age 107
It is no April Fool’s joke when I say that the author that has most impacted my writing and reading life is Beverly Cleary. Yes, she’s a children’s book author and all her characters are, at the oldest, 13 or 14. But reading her books as a child was magical, and rereading them as an adult to my children, and often on my own just for fun, I realize that she had a gift of being able to distill important characteristics, emotional journeys and complicated plots down to their essence in such a succinct style that her books can be read and understood by her many readers. This doesn’t make the stories or the stakes childish. It makes them accessible to all ages, including 50 year olds.
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