Today my niece, nephew, & my delightfully vocal grand-niece came over. I’d made chowder & skillet cornbread, and my husband had railroad ties to go. It was a good plan: I got to coo over all three ‘kids’! Little makes me as happy as babies and family. And when I have both in one room — my…

You can’t drink the ‘best’ tea everyday. Or it becomes the everyday tea. (Not to mention it’s expensive!) But this morning, after a friend sent me the New Yorker excerpt of Paul Kalanithi’s autobiography (My Last Day as a Surgeon), I immersed myself in the process of my ‘everyday’ tea. The fragrance of the steam rising…

Sometimes when I’m cranky (or blue, or irritable, or maudlin…or just out of sorts), I realise: I’m really none of the above. I’m hungry. Or thirsty. Or tired. Or hot. In other words, it’s not a mental/emotional/even spiritual problem. It’s this rag & bone body of mine that’s the issue. When working well, the body…

Grief knows no timetable. And it’s a sneaky devil: it will creep up on you in an otherwise nice day, and lay you flat out. You won’t know what hit you. I mean it: formerly rosy days will grey, wilt around the edges, and it may take weeks before you remember…Oh! Mom’s gone. That would…

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