Category Archives: A Day in the Life

A Hellish Year, Part 1: Shame

This year has been the year of the violent metaphor. When J first announced to me that he “wasn’t sure he wanted to be married anymore” (yes, that is the way he put it), it was a bomb exploding on my lap. No. He was the bomb and I was caught in his blast radius. I haveContinue reading “A Hellish Year, Part 1: Shame”

A Hellish Year: An Introduction

I have been avoiding this blog for months now. Part of it is self-censorship. How can I possibly start talking about what happened without getting too personal or saying too much and hurting my children? (I can’t. Warning: this is going to get personal). Part of it is that the pain and anger and tidal waveContinue reading “A Hellish Year: An Introduction”

On Killing the Angel

First of all, I just want to put this out there: I am in love with Virginia Woolf. Although I had read Mrs. Dalloway (twice) and To the Lighthouse and loved them, I never realised how prolific she was and how fierce and intelligent her essays were. I have recently finished A Room of One’sContinue reading “On Killing the Angel”

Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part IV

On the Little Pigeon Hole I created for Myself OR Who Do I think I am? Quote from Solnit’s essay: “Woolf is calling for a more introspective version of the poet Walt Whitman’s “I contain multitudes,” a more diaphanous version of the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s “I is another.” She is calling for circumstances that do notContinue reading “Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part IV”

Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part III

On My Pathological Need to Know Exactly What is Going to Happen All the Time Quote from Solnit’s essay: “As I began writing this essay, I picked up a book on wilderness survival by Laurence Gonzalez and found in it this telling sentence: “The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to seeContinue reading “Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part III”

Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part II

On the slow closing of my mind OR How I always need to be doing something for fear of the darkness  Quote from Solnit’s essay: “Most people are afraid of the dark. Literally, when it comes to children, while many adults fear, above all, the darkness that is the unknown, the unseeable, the obscure. AndContinue reading “Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part II”

Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable

Once in a blue moon I will pick up a book that is exactly what I need to be reading at that moment. Thanks by the way to Julian and Simone, for bringing this slim but powerful volume to my attention). It is the missing piece of a puzzle that has been worrying my subconscious.Continue reading “Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable”

Self-Censorship Shmelf-shmensorship

One of the reasons personal posts have become few and far between is because my children are now of the age where they actually read this blog. I have become more circumspect about sharing anything that might embarrass them or give away something a child should never know about her mother. As you can imagine,Continue reading “Self-Censorship Shmelf-shmensorship”