Twenty-nine years ago, I was a newly minted wife and mother. I had a toddler daughter and a son in my womb, ready to be born within days. I should have been happy – fulfilled – but I knew deep down, that something was missing. It wasn’t something though. I had tried all the things that I thought should fill this nagging aching void. I had tried to fulfill myself through education, marriage, family, even a false religion that elevated me to goddess status. I had taken a lot of wrong turns before marriage. Done things and said things that I was not ( and am not) proud of. As…

I rarely write about things I see in the news media, as I know how there are two sides to every story. Sometimes there are three or four sides. This is a little different, as this topic hit home on a visceral level. A few months ago, I read that a firefighter in Glastonbury, Connecticut uttered these words when confronted about overdosing addicts. “I think you get rid of f*****g NARCAN, and when people overdose, you let them die.” Narcan is also known as Naloxone and is a medication administered in an emergency to counter decreased breathing when an addict is dying from an overdose of opioids. Unfortunately, the firefighter’s…

A neighbor and dear friend recently suffered the loss of his beloved son, only days before Thanksgiving. It is in bitter moments like these, I am reminded that the first Thanksgiving celebrated in the United States was rooted not only in gratitude but grief. One hundred and two passengers sailed aboard The Mayflower, landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts in November of 1620. I live a stone’s throw from Massachusetts and November is an unforgiving month for the growth of food or warmth of the body. Of the original one hundred and two passengers, only fifty-three would be alive after the first winter had ended. I’m a writer, not a mathematician, however,…