Writing As Refuge: A Daily Journal Practice Rooted in Ritual and Discipline I started maintaining a journal in graduate school, and now two decades later, writing in my journal is a daily ritual. My day begins with the journal’s blank page and a caffé latte. I savor the blend of creamy milk and the espresso’s…
Stillness, Silence, and the Writing Process When I think of silence and its relationship to writing, I think first of the essential role of stillness in my writing process. Stillness allows me to find a calm not accessible elsewhere. It is a quiet that leads to reflection and increases my capacity to listen to an…
Winter: A Different Kind of Beauty in Provence Years ago and long before Tom and I had a home in France, we found ourselves in the hilltop, walled village of Gordes in the Vaucluse area of Provence. It was a summer day with a blue sky of such depth that it looked to be crafted…
Answering the Call to a Writing Life At age fifty, I returned to graduate school to pursue an MFA in writing. Desire to pursue something for the sheer pleasure of it rather than professional ambition led me there. At the time my goals were both predictable—to develop and refine my skills as a writer—and also…
Gilbert and Annie, my husband Tom’s and my Jack Russell terriers, came into our lives as puppies. They were both strong-willed, energetic, and highly intelligent. I always thought that we negotiated with rather than trained them. This proved to be especially true of Annie, as she joined our family ten months after Gilbert’s arrival. Instead…
“Do you have children?” is a question I’ve grown used to hearing whenever I meet someone for the first time. And yet after all these years, I still hesitate over my answer. A simple “no” never seems sufficient. I almost always add that Tom and I were not able to have children. This usually ends…
Redefining Refuge Refuge means different things depending on context. It can refer to shelter or protection from danger or distress, but it can also refer to a feeling of being seen and cherished, of belonging. Refuge may be found in places, in community, in relationships, in whatever nourishes the human spirit. I say sometimes that…
Can a Home Away be Familiar? In The Reader, a novel by Bernhard Schlink, the protagonist comments that he once believed he should be more adventurous in his travel, and so he explored countries and cities he might not have visited otherwise. Eventually, though, he recognized that he preferred to concentrate on the locales he…