As spring hangs on the tips of every branch, verdant green stalks shooting through mud, tight buds on the brink of bursting open, And the skies aswirl with storms of a passing season, There is a dense and unrelenting darkness Like the deep sleep of winter — Crowding, pressing, pushing Us to stillness,…
Tag: children
White Man Yelling in a Crowded Hall: How do we react?
Last night, it became crystal clear that my daughter is the generation raised with gun violence as an everyday aspect of their lives. I knew that, of course. I’ve been a teacher for over 20 years and we’ve been doing lockdown drills for what seems like forever. But this . . . We were at…
Butterflies, Guns, and Freedom: Why I’m So Done with the 2nd Amendment
There is a reason the young Pavel Friedman wrote from Terezin in 1942 that he “Never Saw Another Butterfly.” In the Nazi-made ghetto, where freedom was squashed and guards paraded around with guns slung over their shoulders, how could something as free as a butterfly exist? I’ve been thinking about Pavel a lot lately. I’ve…
No Kumbaya moment, just a daily practice of focusing on the good: November Days of Gratitude
When you live in the Bay Area, and your whole state is up in flames and the country, too, but more figuratively than literally, it can be hard to find what you can be grateful for. I’ve come to believe it’s an important practice, though, even as negativity, doom and gloom nip at your heels….
A love like no other: November Days of Gratitude
The moment my daughter was born, I remember being shocked — not by her miraculous birth (because it had been a ridiculously long and difficult labor and delivery — kind of a miracle I made it through) but because I knew in that very second that I would walk in front of a moving train…
The Light We Find In Our Stories
As the days got longer this year, I found it darker than usual. It’s been a rather dark time — and in the darkness, there is an abundance of quiet — so much quiet that I haven’t been able to find the words to blog. Don’t worry — nothing in particular has been wrong —…
The Season of Unpixelated Wonder
Have you ever been so caught up in a moment of wonder, so captured by something, that the world stands still? For me, those moments are usually highly visual moments — which means that a whole lot of feelings are woven in and through an image captured only by my mind’s shutter. Those are probably…
November Days of Gratitude: Pieces of Your Heart
They walk around the world In their torn jeans, wearing flip flops, ponytails and home-done manicures. Not children any longer, their days and dreams grow, take them farther from home. Still, though, a rapid-fire response, fierce protection of any slight, day or night — can trigger out from my spirit, like darts being thrown in…
Listening in on the Grown-Ups: an early lesson in taking a stand on what’s right and true
My brain sometimes works like a Facebook feed — memories flash across and I think “Whoa — I haven’t thought of that in a long time!” Just now, I watched Jimmy Fallon’s intro from right after the Charlottesville horror, and as he mentioned his own two young children, a memory of my parents flashed through…
What might happen if you had an unshakable faith in the possible?
What might it look like if you had an unshakable faith in the possible? I don’t think that’s as much about “hope” as it is being able to visualize clearly what could happen if . . . We know that research supports this theory of visualization as practice. When we create pictures in our mind’s…
Finding Treasures in those Old Photographs (Write Every Day, 23)
It was when I was searching and sorting through my old photos yesterday for a particular photograph that time seemed to stand still. What a wonderful break from the disasters unfolding around the country. I found myself deep in “remember whens” — such nostalgia. During my walk down memory lane, the biggest draw on my…
The promises we make to ourselves can be the hardest to keep. (Write Every Day 16)
That picture was taken years ago on a trip to the San Juan Islands. I’m holding my oldest who will now be entering her second year of college, and I love the way the reflection and the mirror seem to hang perfectly in the field. We’re looking forward and backward at the same time. I…
Barbara Ganias Comstock 