Daily Verse 11.9.20: Simply Play
One of the final chapters of my first book, Unscripted, is entitled Simply Play. When I was in the throws of my final editing process of that book, going line by painful line a wonderfully persnickety editor, I remember saying this to her: “Just take it out. Delete the whole …
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Daily Verse 11.5.20: Being A Mammal
Remember that one beautiful line in Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese, where she writes about letting “the soft animal of our body love what it loves.” That part. The animal. I forget I am one sometimes. Many times, in fact. I forget the basics like drinking water and remembering to …
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Daily Verse 11.4.20: Just Keep Swimming
I cannot tell you how much inspiration I have gotten from that little blue angelfish, Dory, in the movie Finding Nemo. Remember her? She was a kind and beautiful spirit inside a fish’s body and had the unfortunate (or was it her saving grace?) affliction of having no short-term memory. …
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Daily Verse 11.3.20: A Bundle of Contradictions
How is it I can be a champion of women’s leadership and be brought to my knees by the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett? How is it I can be so full of gratitude for this time we’re in and so full of despair? How is it I can feel …
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Daily Verse 11.1.20: Captain’s Log
There is this scene from the movie The Dead Poet Society that haunts me. It’s where Robin Williams, an irreverent and heretical new teacher at this traditional boarding school, gathers his students around him in class one day (“huddle up!”) and quotes a couple of lines from Walt Whitman’s poem …
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Getting Naked With My Truth
There are days I am convinced my entire life is strung together with a series of movie clips and soundtracks—connecting the bits of insights and moments of clarity in such a way that they literally reveal the breadcrumbs that have moved me forward. That was the case the other morning …
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The Pattern Of Questions
I don’t know what magic lives in a bathroom, but whenever I’m in the shower I start writing in my head and have my absolute best insights. And whenever I’m going throughout my day with my hair on fire, sometimes the only moment I get to stop — and be …
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Pebbles In My Shoe
Someone once wrote about me in an interview, observing that “it seems she never stops thinking, considering, fitting pieces together.” That woman got me, she did. She described how I move (“she talks with her hands and her arms, radiating exuberance…”) and didn’t seem surprised to learn that I was …
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On Turning 50: A Story
Age is a funny thing. On one hand I’ve always found it rather arbitrary and annoying—a number that aims to qualify, and in many cases DISqualify, the value or merit of an opinion, idea, or presence. As an old soul who historically has looked younger than my years, I have …
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Re-Membering
I liked this TED talk. AND it triggered me at various points. Many, in fact. Maybe you don’t know this about me because of, you know, what I DO right now, but I’ve spent most of my life identifying more with men than I did with women. Not with regards …
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