The Labyrinth

It's been a shitty year. Really, a terrible, horrible, deeply shitty, very bad year.  That’s the best I can do to describe what our family has endured since last spring. From the spring of 2024 to spring of 2025, we’ve experienced what feels like decades worth of loss and struggle: my sister-in-law's sudden, excruciating death from cancer, our daughter's months’ long debilitating and life-threatening illness, and my beloved mentor's tragic accident and subsequent death. And then, just when I thought we might catch our breath, one more very shitty thing: my breast cancer diagnosis, followed swiftly by a double mastectomy, and the prospect of radiation on the horizon. None of this was seen coming. My brother and sister-in-law had sold their little house and launched into a semi-retired life of on-the-road and globe-hopping adventure. One winter in Costa Rica, one summer in the Canadian Maritimes, a diagnosis in November and she was gone by March.  Our young adul...

My mother always said “two moves are as good as a fire.” This was hard won wisdom, as we moved a lot when I was a kid - like six times in 10 years—the first being a major downsize from the mid-century modern house she and my dad built and raised six kids in for 15 years or so. She found moving stressful, but she was also a pro. The church friends would show up early in the morning with their trucks and station wagons and laughter, and there was always a big pot of chili in the crockpot that could be easily moved from the old place to the new to feed the crew. And then, in the evening or the next morning, we’d return to the old place to clean. I mean scrub the walls from top to bottom, and scour the cabinets in and out: really clean like people seldom seem to do today.  As an adult, I’m now in the midst of my 12th move, in my 5th city/state/ province . We’ve upsized and downsized, and upsized, and are downsizing once more as, after nine years of renting, we finally purchase our fir...

About thirty years ago, I moved from Vancouver, BC, with my new husband, a southerner, to Atlanta, to pursue a PhD in women’s studies. The doctoral program at Emory University was new, one of the first of its kind, and I was to become one of the first graduates in the country in this interdisciplinary field.  I was more than a little proud, very exhilarated, completely terrified, and somewhat culture-shocked.   That first year, we joined a big Presbyterian church in downtown Atlanta. How we ended up there, neither of us being Presbyterian, and having an over-abundance of churches to choose from, is a story for another day. Kind of formal and fancy, but without much by way of artistry or liturgy, somewhat wealthy and very white, it really wasn’t the best fit for either of us, but we stuck it out for about a year. Determined to really give it a go, I joined the women’s bible class, even though it met before the service (I am not a morning person) and, at 26, I was the youngest ...