YEARS AGO, when my daughter was married, I discovered a reservoir of sadness over my own failed marriage. God provided friends to help me cope, and I thought it had gone. But when my middle child Phil married two years later, my sadness, I discovered, was still there ..read more

"This Could Have Gone Wrong In So Many Ways." DRIVING SOUTH ON THE AlCan HIGHWAY, I zippity-zipped up behind a double tanker full of liquid hydrogen peroxide. Not so crazy about trailing such a monster, I waited for a straight shot in the road to pass. No sooner had I cleared the truck and gotten myself back onto our side of the highway when another twist in the road took me around a bend, onto about a football field of straightaway. On the 75-yard line ahead, on the other side of the road, a moose. Walking away from me. . Absolute clarity took over my mind ..read more

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED how some people can be Mean Girl behind the scenes while publicly charming? Leaving you in a wilt? I attended a writers workshop the other day and there SHE was. Mean Girl with her smiley face a square on my computer screen. She smiled and charmed, and was oh-so-helpful and witty and wise while I spent six hours wondering why I could not function. I couldn't even manage to speak. Six hours! Why could I not get myself together? What was wrong with me ..read more

AFTER BREAST CANCER and mangled attempts at reconstruction, I was looking a bit like Birch Bay Drive of WA State after a vicious storm took the road out. My friend Judy was a buoy during the storm, keeping my head above water. But she wasn't a lot of help when the tide went out and it was time to face the damage. No one was. And I wasn't about to take my clothes off just to show folks exactly what we're dealing with here. Here's the truth, and trust me. . .  ..read more

She Could Out Pray and Out Preach White Patriarchy  Born a slave in 1797​​​​ on the estate of Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh Jr. - a Revolutionary War hero and wealthy landowner 95 miles north of New York City - Isabella (Belle) was born child #9 to James Baumfree and Elizabeth Bett. She carried no memory of her older siblings; the Colonel had a habit of selling them off. Nor did she remember the Colonel. She was a toddler when he died in 1799. She did remember his son ..read more

A LONG TIME AGO, "The Oregon" of North America’s mid-Pacific Coastline was a far-away region jointly accupied by England and America. England’s Hudson’s Bay Company had been there forever and over the years various American companies arrived, all vying for furs provided by native tribes. To The Oregon, then, is where Narcissa headed in 1836 to be a missionary, traveliing with her new husband and, unexpextedly, her old nemesis—bitter because Narcissa had once refused his hand. Awkward ..read more

“Why did you make Santa’s nose that color?” Jerry jeered. My six-year-old self stiffened, helpless against the red-headed, freckle-faced boy who sat in the desk ahead of me. Daddy had told me Jerry taunted because he liked me. A terrible worry. If boys made fun of you when they liked you, what did they do if they didn’t? I stared at the cherry red crayon in my hand, fire in my cheeks. “Santa’s nose isn’t cherry!” he sneered. I instantly felt everyone turn to stare and fell to my usual frantic prayer: Jesus, open a hole so I can fall in. Invisible, no one could hurt me ..read more

A WOMAN KNOWN ONLY as the Lone Woman has a story we cannot know. Yet we try. She was born on San Nicholas Island off the coast of Santa Barbara’s Channel Islands in the early 1800s, a small outcropping of sandstone and sea mist, home to the Nicoleño for millennia. In 1835, the Catholic Church rounded up those who remained, but she got left behind. Subsequent searches found no trace of her. She was given up for dead and became the legendary Lone Woman.... Until found in 1853 ..read more

ONCE upon a time … the raging dragon … a hero and a damsel in distress. Remember the old fairy tales? Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty and happily ever after? It was always that way in our bedtime stories. But what about real life? What’s happened to our happily ever after? Daily we live under the dragon’s fire: we can hardly conceive of victory ..read more

I’m excited about the resurrection of my 1992 book Taming the Dragons: Powerful Choices for Women in Conflict and Pain. July 2020, it’s back in print but with some changes: 1) updated, 2) more stories, 3) journaling pages, and  4) questions designed for self-reflection that can also be used in group discussions.  Taming the Dragons is a book for women in conflict and pain, but also for anyone going through a rough patch, in transition, or just down on their luck. I name six choices we can all make when up against the dragons in our way, depending on what they are. I partner six women ..read more