Dear community, It is always so interesting to receive your comments to my newsletter. I welcome all your thoughts and hope to receive more of them. Special shoutout to Emma D., for entering the conversation and responding in writing! No pressure, by the way, but please keep in mind that when something is being stirred inside of you by the newsletter, I would love to hear about it. One of the great loves of my life is words. So when I found the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I couldn’t...

Dear Community, I woke from a nightmare with the words “Weeping Woman” in my mind. Strangely, in the dream, “Weeping Woman” was the name of a compensation package(!). I searched for it after waking. No such compensation package exists. But The Weeping Woman is the title of a famous 1937 painting by Pablo Picasso. And La Llorona—“The Weeping Woman”—is also the title of one of my favorite songs. I am listening to it on repeat as I write this, and I invite you to listen with me...

Dear Community, A day before I returned from Germany, my husband almost died. He went into the backyard to take out the compost. One of the bins had been knocked over during a windstorm and he attempted to straighten it. Unfortunately, the compost bin had been claimed by a large and extremely territorial family of yellowjackets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowjacket) They attacked him. He was stung approximately ten times, all over his body. At first, he attempted to manage the situation...