Category: suffering

• August 10, 2022

  The Mysterious Black Madonna

  Her face was everywhere. Growing up Catholic in the 1950s, statues of saints and their pictures on “holy cards” were a part of daily life. But the scarred face of the Madonna of Czestochowa was special. In our immigrant community, she represented the Polish people’s struggle for nationhood. A fifteenth-century Polish historian wrote that the […]
• July 15, 2022

  The Last Witness

  There is a poem I love called The Last Uncle by Linda Pastan. It captures the feeling I had when my own last uncle died. My mother’s brother John was the last person I knew who had witnessed the Great Depression and WWII. Everyone who knew me as a child had now left the planet. […]
• November 1, 2019

  Letting Go of Happy

  The other day, I said to my husband, half-joking, “I’m going to be happy before I die, if it kills me!” For as long as I can remember, there’s been a little bit of sadness sitting in the back of my heart. I wanted it to go away. I read lots of self-help books and […]
• June 27, 2018

  The Comfort of Words

  I read today that Joyce Carol Oates describes sitting down at her writing desk as “low dread.” Hmmm. Just how I see America today: “low dread.”  What new horror will our president and his enablers bring upon us? Crying children torn from their parents, closing the door on immigrants because of their country’s majority religion, […]
• September 22, 2017

  Mercy, mercy me!

    Maybe it’s my Polish Catholic upbringing, but the themes of forgiveness and mercy are showing up in the books I choose to read. And a glance at the magazines near the supermarket checkout would lead us to believe we have much to forgive. Whether it’s how to be a better parent or spouse or […]
• November 20, 2015

  Your Attention, Please

  Feeling rattled? Pay attention to the good.
• December 20, 2012

  Kat’s Tales – first in a series

  This is the first in a series of posts by Kat Kowalski, protagonist of my novel in progress, Memoirs of the Queen of Poland. Ever since I came back from the nineteenth century, I have wanted to tell my story. It’s taken me a few years to get it all down on paper. Life intervenes, […]
• January 25, 2012

  Broken Handed Writer

  Exactly one week before Christmas, I slipped off a step inside my house and broke my left hand. Suddenly, I was on a forced winter vacation. I can’t write, can’t knit, can’t quilt, and can’t drive. What I can do is read, watch TV, take long walks, and think about all kinds of stuff. I’ve […]