Listen to the podcast here. World, please meet my longtime friend, Tom Schwans. Tom and I went to college for two years together (because he’s two years younger than I am. Isn’t that amazing how math works?) and had really fallen completely out of touch for years and years. Until I had a super fabulous theatre dream about him and our mutual friend Joel Liestman four years ago. It was so vivid, and I remembered it so clearly, that I sent Tom a Facebook message to please give me his phone number so I could recount the dream to him. Thank goodness for social media! On a long drive to…
Personal Writing
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I’m launching my new podcast e2 on Saturday!
It’s time to start something new. I mean, surely all this social distancing (if we are privileged and get to stay at/work from home, which I am) is the perfect time to get a little uncomfortable. That is my word for 2020 after all. I’m sending out my first podcast of this new stage, henceforth known as e2, Saturday afternoon. I have a lot to learn, so I hope you’ll tune in, send thoughts/feedback/criticism (remember, I have a theatre degree, so I know how to take criticism!) and let me know if you have a story you would like to tell that is loosely based around any/all of these themes:…
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There is a season
This story originally appeared in the March April 2020 issue of Inspired Home magazine. April is in my mistress’ face, And July in her eyes hath place; Within her bosom is September, But in her heart a cold December. In high school, I sang in an ensemble called the Renaissance Singers. I woke up recently singing the alto line of this beautiful English madrigal by Thomas Morley, completely out of the blue. It’s incredible how powerful our memory for music is. I haven’t actively sung this song in 30 years, but I recalled almost the entirety of my part all these years later. But then I started thinking about the lines of this…
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Pursuing passion and finding grace in the midst of a global pandemic (podcast & zoom check in)
One of the things I’m working on now that I have some extra time is really trying to be strategic about where I want extraordinaryextraordinary to go next. I’m reading books, listening to podcasts, making podcasts (still trying to get a handle on that medium, to be honest. Ugh, technology! ) and thinking about what value I can provide. To that end, I invite you to consider these seven questions: 1. What’s causing you stress right now?2. How are you managing it?3. What could you do to be managing it better? Where can you cut yourself some slack? Where can you offer yourself some grace? If you had a magic…
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Dr Marry, by any other name, would be as sweet…
Over the course of writing this blog, a number of people have queried as to why I refer to my beloved spouse as Dr Marry. Let the querying be put to rest. Quite simply, I call him Dr Marry in honor of Jane Austen. I present these examples of what I speak: “Mr Bennet, Mr Bennet, good news! Netherfield Park is let at last!” Mrs Bennet, Pride and Prejudice “Anne found an unexpected interest here. She felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her, and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move,…
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Welcome to what is next
We’ll start from failure, but that’s not where we’ll spend much time, because that’s not the interesting part of the story. It’s the pivot, the path forged from that failure that has me intrigued, and I think will intrigue a vast audience. It’s the learning, the joy, the discoveries that come from the failure that is where we’ll ultimately spend the majority of our time.
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Two Voices of Hope: Counting Our Blessings, an Epilogue (9c podcast)
In this, our final podcast and post of this journey, we wrap up this nine-week multi-media experience about Dr Marry’s fall into alcoholism and our shared path back to sobriety. But mostly, this podcast is about gratitude. Gratitude for the doctors, nurses and staff of Sanford; the insurance worker at Sanford who eased my mind and the woman on the phone from MN Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The Prairie St John’s staff and residents. Former students, friends and strangers who wrote to lift us up, to share their own journey, to say thank you. Grateful for the friends and colleagues who helped us conceive of this format. Grateful to…
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Two Voices of Hope: Counting Our Blessings, an Epilogue (9b video)
Shame. To be ashamed. How many people’s lives have been ruined because of shame? Because the fear of being shamed or of having to name your shame or the curse of bringing shame to yourself, your family, your… keeps you silent and trapped. That’s addiction. At least that has been our experience with addiction. How could a highly intelligent, affable, tender-hearted, inquisitive, happy go lucky Irishman fall down the hole of addiction so profoundly that at 47 years old, he literally stared death in the face before turning his life around? How could a feisty, articulate, challenging, fierce advocate for those she loves wife watch this happen and not find…
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Two Voices of Hope: Counting Our Blessings, an Epilogue (9a)
Dr Marry and I started talking about doing this series of posts about his alcoholism and our journey through addiction together in November of 2019. The truth is, the great majority of people in our lives had no idea that this happened or that Dr Marry continues to this day to be an alcoholic enjoying sobriety, because for the rest of his life, he will be an alcoholic. But I also believe fervently that he will, for the rest of his life, be sober. I don’t say that glibly or without the understanding that there are people who are sober for decades who, for some reason or another, fall off…
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Two Voices of Hope: Second Star to the Right, and Straight on ’til Morning… (8c podcast)
This week’s podcast wraps up Dr Marry’s final week’s post. I”m not sure why Dr Marry starts the podcast with “antibacterial,” but at least it’s a timely, topical word for the global pandemic we are in. 😬 Dr Marry and I take a meandering stroll through all kinds of things–some alcohol-related and some not. Side note, Dr Marry chose the underscore music, “Dance of Felt” this week because it felt the most “Jane Austen-like” of our options. LOVE it! Ultimately, I finally landed on the words I haven’t been able to articulate about what Dr Marry has done in these posts. I am grateful for having found them. I also…