All my life, people have passed away either way too young or just old enough to have “had a good life.” But like the miracle of birth, the mystery of death always happens in its own time. It cares nothing about convenience or preparedness. No one ever asks me if I’m ready. I was 13…
Tag: family
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….
Our Good Dog: In Memoriam and With Gratitude
Each year, as we count down the days to Thanksgiving, I count down my blessings. Usually, starting on the First of the Month, I offer up a gratitude each morning. It’s not difficult to find things I’m grateful for — and it’s proven to be a way to center my days, even as the light…
How my new pressure cooker is blowing my mind
Mealtime just got a makeover around here. Dinner doldrums and ruts be gone . . . there’s a new pressure cooker in town. Ok, maybe I’m being a little over-dramatic, but there is a reason that the Instant Pot has become all the rage. Open Pinterest and there are countless recipes to whet your appetite;…
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 —…
Merry Everything that’s Holy
Originally posted on Barbara Ganias Comstock:
After the long, hard slog of autumn, it’s the morning of Christmas Eve. I am a swirl of thoughts and emotions as I face my fears and count my blessings. My older daughter is home from college, having survived her first semester with many triumphs, and my younger one…
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…
The Day After . . .
It’s actually “the day after the day after” because we had two Thanksgivings: one where we brought a honey-baked ham and all the fixings to my elderly inlaws (because ham was much easier to transport than turkey) and then the other, yesterday, when we roasted a turkey and made Greek stuffing for the teenagers who…
Happy Thanksgiving to my blogging world
So many things to be thankful for! I’ve tried to spend the last month being really aware of the things I’m grateful for, but here are a few more, just for today: *So grateful to have my girls both home, making a mess out of the house. Someday, there will be no one left to…
November Days of Gratitude: The dog that rescued us
I’ve started this three times already because Toby, our yellow lab, makes it very clear that he belongs only to Husband, and I’ve wondered if I can express what he means to the rest of us. He’s a one-person kind of dog; he tolerates, and sometimes loves the rest of us, yet he is easy…
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…
The day before you leave is the longest journey (Write Every Day, 25)
We leave tomorrow for a week in Hawaii and I’ve been trying to prepare myself for the insanity of today, the day before, but there really is no way to prepare. Today is the longest journey. Of course there is the packing . . . but that isn’t all of it. There are the animals:…
Barbara Ganias Comstock 