SUBJECT: Go away MESSAGE: Go back where you came from. You’ve done enough damage here. I received that email from a woman. A person I’d never met. Who has never locked eyes with mine. Who I bet feels she is well-informed. Her message came on the eve of my book signing in Kansas City, no […]

Anxiety. A ferocious emotion. I lived with it for years. My first bout came in my early twenties and was nearly incapacitating. It’s what drove me to therapy. And while I was cured of the worst of it, generalized anxiety remained. That was no picnic either. I wasn’t as bad off as before, but my […]

Eww. In Florida, at 9:13 pm, while innocently reading my book after a long day of visiting my mother, some 90-year old couple in the apartment above me started making a racket. At first, the noise was no different than all the other times they’d disrupted my peace—it’s like they walk across their bedroom in […]

Stuck. That’s my takeaway whenever people tell me why they CAN’T do something they have a deep yearning for. I’ve been anxious for two thirds of my life, but I’ve never been a quitter. In fact, Funk says the worst thing someone can tell me is that I “can’t” do something, as it’s the surest […]

“If I had a mother like me, think what I could have become!” That’s what I say to my children, now that they’re adults. It’s usually precipitated by me trying to impart loving, wise advice that would change their lives for the better, yet ungrateful beasts that they are, they usually just roll their eyes […]

“I have phone sex every Tuesday.” That’s what I reply in exasperation to Funk and the kids whenever they text me just before I’m about to get on a call with my therapist. I’ve been going to Shelly, or Shells, as I call her, since 2005. The precipitating factor with that go round with therapy […]

“Funk. This really sucks.” When I was pregnant with my firstborn, that’s what I used to grumble to my husband about having to get up every hour in the middle of the night to use the restroom. In his usual uncaring manner, Funk responded that I should buy some Depends. The next time we were […]

I landed a BookBub Featured Deal, which is a really big deal. It’s like hitting the motherlode. I can hardly believe my luck. BookBub is considered the most prestigious book connector site out there, and winning a spot in their coveted newsletter is highly competitive. Debut authors get significant exposure and readers get significant deals. […]

“Funk. Why do I have to use an asterisk when I write the word f*ck?” “Because it’s cute.” “It’s not cute, it’s totally phony.” My husband gave me the look that our dead dog, Ginny-dog, used to give me whenever she didn’t know how to respond, so I let it go. And I think the […]

Conversations that matter. I had a friend once. Or, I thought I had a friend. We met in childbirth class. It was her first pregnancy, my second. Both of us being young mothers in a new city, we soon became inseparable. I am a homebody and she was a coming-over-body. Since I was more comfortable […]