How to Hold It Careful—it burns. And the hot pads of the mind—sexdrugsrock&roll  and the like—you might not want  to imbibe this early on a Wednesday  morning.                  You can wiggle it,  like a loose tooth, juggling  all the keywords: flank pain/adnexal mass/recurrent ovarian cyst/stage what?  on Google Scholar.                                    You can try  to share it: break off a piece   ..read more

There was water.  We met outside, doing our part  to stop the spread,  two hours from our house  and two hours from theirs:  built a fire in the grate  next to the picnic shelter at the Thurston County public park under the leaky canopy  we brought ourselves; and the water— beating on the shelter roof,  puddling on the paths,  pooling in the saggy canopy until it filled and splashed out all at once like a bucket at a water park, sheeting a sudden wall of water between the picnic tables and the makeshift hot dog kitchen,  and after lunch, when w ..read more

Recently, I noticed an unusual pain in my chest, just at the top of my breast tissue. Worried it might have something to do with cancer, I found myself obsessively pressing on the tender spot throughout the day, trying to probe the boundaries of my pain. Where did I hurt? How much? Why? A conversation with my doctor — and, later, a previously scheduled mammogram — proved I had nothing to worry about. But I kept pressing, trying to figure it out, until the day my skin yellowed like an old bruise, and I suddenly realized that it was a bruise. A week or two before, I remembered, I’d ba ..read more

I didn’t fall in love enough  with the writing. The writing is  extremely engaging and compelling.  Please pass along my best wishes.  I’m going to sadly pass. I love this book. Love it.  So brave. Beautiful.  Heartbreaking. A masterful job. Riveting reading. Powerfully illuminates a tough and powerful  absolutely unique story with brutal honesty and a unique and compelling perspective. I appreciate what the author is doing here. Ultimately  Unfortunately But Alas Anyway All this to say It’s not quite—   we weren’t able—    we ..read more

Friday was my kids’ last day of school until who knows when. So I decided to go to Costco for my third stock-up grocery run of the week. I’m not hoarding, I just have seven people in the house. Who eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And one of our seven has a suppressed immune system. It seemed like a good idea to take one last opportunity to prepare to lay low for a while.  When I arrived half an hour before the store opened, the line outside already snaked clear around to the back of the building. As we finally entered, the man behind me rammed my cart with his own, hard, twice. Within mi ..read more

Super Tuesday didn’t go the way I’d hoped. Coronavirus is in my county. My stocks—that measly sum I dumped into a Roth IRA years ago, back when my husband and I were double-income-no-kids, and haven’t added to since—are tanking. All three of these major geopolitical situations were weighing on me this morning as I crawled out of bed.  I had a little extra time today, so I sat down with a cup of coffee after my kids walked out the door, and picked up my Bible. I’m going to be honest with you: I decided sometime in January that I would read through the entire ..read more

If you saw my last post, you know that last week, I had surgery to remove a cyst that was possibly malignant. I'll skip to the good news: it wasn't! I'm enormously relieved and thankful. My list of "songs to play at my funeral" can go back in the file cabinet for another day.  As I was waking up in the recovery room, fighting to keep my eyes open so I could prove to the nurse that I was ready to be wheeled out to my family, I kept circling back to one thought: Now I can finish my book. Now I can finish my book. I'm not supposed to lift anything heavier than a half-gallon of milk for ..read more

I sent this letter to my email list today. If you'd like to join that list, please do so here.  Two big things have been going on in my life lately. One: I’m trying to publish a book. Two: doctors are trying to figure out whether I have cancer. It’s kind of a lot. On the one hand, I have publishers saying they love my writing, but they need to see a larger “platform.” Evidence that some magic number of fans out there in the world would actually buy a book from little old me. So, I’m dutifully, clumsily, trying to build a platform: I started a writer Instagram page. (My daughter says I t ..read more

“Your platform,” she says, “is your body of work.” She means, I think, to liberate me from the metrics of platform-as-followers: the notion that if I could somehow lash together enough social media fans, like so many planks of decking, I could step up on their backs and stride away to stardom. But the idea of platform-as-body-of-work strikes no less fear into my heart. What is my body of work, anyway, I wonder. A few dozen blog posts read by a few family members and a few close personal friends? A handful of articles published on websites, some of which have now shuttered? Another handful of ..read more

Well, hello. It’s been so long since I wrote a blog post, I had to make a new blog. But I’m just sitting here feeling kinda crappy, so what else do I have to do? (Spoiler alert: if reading about the minute details of other people’s illnesses isn’t your jam, you might want to go find something else to do with the next six minutes of your life. No hard feelings. Long story short: Lyme Disease sucks.) So, a week and a half ago, I was tromping through the woods in upstate New Hampshire. “But Sarah,” those of you who know me will say, “you live in Oregon.” Yes, I do. I was in New Hampshire on a re ..read more