Voiceless

It happened like this. I went to bed last week with a voice – albeit a throaty, hoarse one – and I woke without one. I was in Austin, scheduled to keynote a conference with a gaggle of women who I simply couldn’t wait to meet. They were “Me, too” women – the kind that

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A Scarf And A Dinner Party

  I’m notoriously bad at taking pause for celebration. I take pause for necessary things – things like rest and rejuvenation, self-preservation and service – but when it comes to a celebratory pause? I don’t know; I hesitate. There’s just always something to do – another project to complete, another email to send, another lesson to learn,

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Zoo Daze

Summer is winding down, and I’m one of those crazy fools who starts mourning the loss of summer before it’s even passed. I can’t help it – my brain just trajects a million miles an hour, a racecar on the final lap. And yes, I do walk around with internal whiplash pretty much daily, you

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Picnic Fridays

Arrive at the dock, spread out snacks. Open a book and start reading to the toddler. Fight the disappointment you feel when she wriggles away. Let her run; today is a day to explore. Throw rocks, smell flowers, point at reflections in the water. Note the ripples. Again, again, again.

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Kid-Free In Saugatuck

So, last week, Ken and I road tripped to Michigan with our friends for really no reason at all except that it was time for a grown-up getaway. This was our first kid-free trip together, and we were so cliche in our childcare preparations that I won’t even go into detail here, except to mention

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Swirls & Snowflakes

So, old news. I’m a social introvert, one that loves people and is fascinated by their stories and perspectives and nuances, but one that needs to take a nap directly after speaking with said people. It takes ALL of my energy to widen my eyes in the right moments and to figure out how to

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Summer & Song

So, I don’t watch the Bachelorette, but I’d totally give July a rose, absolutely. The weather has been spectacularly moody, vacillating between angsty teenage thunderstorms and polite 70-degree afternoons and hey, as a minor coffee addict, mood swings are something I can get behind. The rain makes the sun brighter, is that how the saying

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Getaway

And there were tanned shoulders and chilled rose and chocolate-covered potato chips and brilliant sunsets and fistfuls of blackberries and sandy beach blankets and long, good chats in the most perfectly mild 70-degree evenings and Calgon, take me away.

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