[Poem] A Story About You
I heard that you learned that you didn’t need your wings to be close to heaven. You just needed to find your voice.
I heard that you learned that you didn’t need your wings to be close to heaven. You just needed to find your voice.
My life moves rather fast. If I’m not careful, I could miss all the instances of love that are everywhere waiting for me to just notice.
The best defense lies not in keeping the so-called wrong people out, but in building confidence, purpose, love and kindness for the folks who are in whatever office group, family, neighborhood, city and country that you are in.
Loneliness has always been presented to me as a temporary affliction that can be quickly alleviated through more friends, a more chipper attitude, or joining an adult kickball team.
There are bajillions of traditions that have named and described Life Seasons, but here is my own particular definition (and playlist) for each.
I wrote the following poem about four years ago to help me stop worrying about what my neighbors/friends/relatives/dentist or other writers thought about my writing style and ability.
The thought of death, the great unknown, evokes a variety of emotions, from fear to awe. When you sit down to discuss the topic with end of life planner Alua Arthur, you’re bound to experience the full range. Self-described death doula, Arthur is there during an individual or family’s most intimate and painful moments, easing the transition from this life to the great beyond.
My grandparents used to make spontaneous phone calls. They were also people who stopped by the neighbors’ house unannounced — something I can’t imagine anyone I know actually doing.
For better or for worse, there is no way around the fact that technology breeds isolation, at least in certain ways. Eighty-two percent of American smartphone users (a majority of our nation’s population) reported in a recent Pew survey that the presence of phones deteriorated their most recent in-person conversations. Such figures are harrowing, but not surprising.
“Today you have to put your shoes on by yourself,” my physical therapist announced one morning this spring, after I woke up from another restless night on a stiff plastic mattress. I was recovering from a rare disease that paralyzed my hands and legs for a month, and I was learning how to enter the world outside the hospital again. The worst part of the ordeal was not being able to change sleeping positions at night. The second-worst part was the loss of my treasured independence. I couldn’t turn a page or open my Chap Stick or scratch an itch by myself. It took five minutes to work up enough strength to even move my foot.