How to Find Your Passion
We come into this world as craftspeople. Such craft emerges out of a sense of play.
As little ones, we make sandcastles by the sea, forts out of furniture, fairy hideouts out of firs. Then one day something shifts...
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Women’s Leadership: August Sings Women’s Stories of Power
August is a time of threshold. The change in sunlight becomes obvious, as shadows of dusk arrive earlier each evening...
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A New Podcast About What Lights Us Up in Our Early Years!
This summer marks the 20th anniversary original publication of my literary memoir, FBI GIRL. Years before its debut, when I was 17-years-old, my mother gifted me on my birthday with a brand new electric typewriter along with her greeting, highlighted by her lipstick-sincere-darn it-smile: Someone’s going to write a book about this family! My typewriter was bequeathed a mission. But it would be decades before I hit the drawing board vis a vis my mother’s words. I was devoted to my unfolding heroine’s journey, off to live in world capitols, enjoy a career in media, pursue graduate degrees, moving around...
moreDriven to the Fairies
My father was a special agent for the FBI and 100% Irish with a cigarette perpetually in his hand or hanging out of the corner of his mouth. It is this father who climbed the roof of our house in suburban Los Angeles to hang the Christmas lights each year. With cigarette, yes. He was a man of the hearth. He liked being home—his refuge. He also did the laundry, mopped the floors Friday night while listening to Angel baseball games on his transistor, and aided my younger brother, Joe, born with Down syndrome, with his special needs, such as building wooden blocks for his trainer bike...
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The Race is Now
Race. I’ll start with my brother, Joe Jr. He was born with Down syndrome and in his youth, participated in the Special Olympics. Track and Field. At the starting line, all the kids in bright colors jumped up and down in glee. With the whistle, they were off and running. Yes, running in their own unique, slower and delighted kind of way. Including my brother Joe Jr. with his big grin. Applause and cheers from the stands, smell of grass sweet, and then around the third minute, one racer tripped and fell. The crowd gasped. I imagined the other racers...
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