ONE WORD AT A TIME

Last week, as some of you will remember from the invitation I sent out, I was lucky enough to be “in conversation with” author Erica Jong, just as the last newsletter was going out. It was an evening event with a best-selling novelist who also just happens to be one of the friends I most…

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HERE COMES THE SUN

I have been away from home for two weeks, making a personal pilgrimage abroad, to Israel, for the wedding of my younger son. Our entire trip was exceptional, though I was more than glad to come home, put my feet up and pull my dogs onto my lap in a blanket of black and white.…

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AT MY MOTHER’S KNEE

I was born into a home filled with shelves stuffed full of books. When I was a child, my mother, the poet Anne Sexton, frequently read aloud to me, and the first book I would remember well was a dog-eared blue volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, full of all its macabre horrors. As I reached…

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FRIENDS ARE THE ANCHOR IN HALF MOON BAY

In 1989, my husband and I moved from the New York suburbs to those in the Bay Area south of San Francisco. For me, thirty-six years of “home” had been on the East Coast–but the lure of a new and lucrative job beckoned him. He was ambitious. I was reluctant. Where would you like to…

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A POTENT MAGIC

As I tackle this week’s newsletter, I find myself feeling tired and swamped. When I consider how many things are happening in my life right now, I am not surprised. I have passed the three hundred page mark in my novel, as well as creating over forty newsletters to connect with you all over the…

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A MOTHER’S PILGRIMAGE

In August of this year, my younger son is getting married. For this momentous event, the entire family will travel to Israel, a destination known by many as “The Holy Land.” This appellation is appropriate for every one of us, even though we come from different backgrounds and religions, because the union between my son…

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THE RISK IT TAKES TO BLOSSOM

At some point in our lives, all of us feel insecure—whether because we are rejected by someone we love, or because we make a hash of a good career opportunity, or because we choose poorly and discover ourselves in a situation in which we do not want to be, or simply because we allow ourselves…

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A LESSON IN LOSS FROM GREEN BEAN

As usual, I have a “dog story” to tell you. And as usual, it is far more than that, having become, for me, a “life story.” I am on a plane travelling to the Dalmatian Club of American National Specialty Show in Ohio, writing by hand on a yellow pad of paper, with a solitary…

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FROM RATTING TO WRITING

February has arrived, with its daffodils pushing up from the earth here in Northern California, and its heavy drifts of snow where some of my friends live in New England. Regardless of location, all of us remind ourselves that the new season is just around the corner, whether we do so with the despair of…

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WHY CAN’T A HUMAN BE MORE LIKE A DOG?

A number of weeks ago I wrote about the four “A”s that fulfill the needs of our hearts: Attention, Affection, Appreciation and Acceptance. My Thanksgiving newsletter, “Turning the Wild Animals Loose,” described the ways in which I have often had trouble accepting the problems that come my way. Since then, I have been working on…

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