Sue Monk Kidd is one of those authors whose books end too soon for me. Not because they are short but because reading them is like a deep conversation with a beloved friend. When the book ends, I say goodbye reluctantly, knowing our next visit is a long way off and that I’ll miss...
Dreams are fragile things. This poem makes me think of the many dreams people have shared with me over the years, and I with them. Inner doubts and naysayers can so easily crush them. They are the embroidered cloths of our spirits. We need them if we are to release the talents that lie...
This has been a good day – walking to Urban Harvest for the week’s supply of fruits and vegetables, doing a bit of work on a contract and some writing, walking and talking with a friend who’s moving soon (I’ll miss her), talking on the phone with my partner (who always puts a smile...
In 1938 Barbara Ueland published what I still regard as the best book of advice for anyone feeling hesitant about or needing encouragement to pursue their dreams. If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit is a book I’ve carried around with me for more than two decades. No matter...
My thanks to Tess Healy for this quote, which comes from a book by Laurel Richardson. The story of a life is less than the actual life, because the story told is selective, partial, contextually constructed and because the life is not yet over. But the story of a life is also more than...
Many of you have sent e-mails telling me that in reading stories and poems or watching videos on Catching Courage, you hear whispers from your own souls. Those e-mails mean a lot to me. This crazy life can wear grooves in our souls. In our darkest hours—and at the summit of our joys—we need...
“My mind remains a bad neighborhood that I try not to go into alone.” Anne Lamott, Salon Magazine, March 1997
“The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This...
“We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these...
The generosity of those who post freely to the Web has long made me feel incredibly fortunate to be living in the Internet age. Best-selling author Seth Godin has just confirmed that generosity with his e-book, What Matters Now. The authors who contributed to the e-book are familiar names. Each entry is titled with...
“Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledged—desires that now seem possible. Women can catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read, and women call the bearer of...
Facebook
Twitter