Looking to the past to cope with the present

 As life continues to be unsettled, I’ve thought about my late mother even more than usual recently and, in particular, how she coped during rough times. Both practical and pragmatic, when life was difficult Mom turned to baking or knitting. If she could give the...

Life and writing in lockdown

When this is all over… I hear that phrase often these days as everyone, me included, wants life in 2020 to go back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible, whatever that ‘new normal’ will be. For the moment, though, life (and for me, writing), have to go on in lockdown. As...

Celebrating women who have gone before

To mark women’s history month (celebrated in March in the United States, UK and Australia), I’m this month’s featured author on my friend Mel Greenberg’s ‘Notes from the Nest’ blog. I’ve written a personal piece about what ‘women who have gone before’ mean...

Falling down, getting up and moving forward

Several weeks ago, while walking in my small town I slipped and fell on a patch of ice that lurked under a blanket of fresh snow. Since three generations of women in my mother’s family broke their hips, one when she was not much older me, that ‘legacy’ flashed across...