My nine-year daughter has flopped herself on my bedroom floor while I am sitting on the corner of my bed, struggling to put on my tennis shoes. “You’re annoying,” she says, as if she is observing this quality for the first time. Annoying and mean are my daughter’s new favorite adjectives…

January 2021. Was that Trump’s exit? No curtain call, please. It is the end of January, 2021. Is it in the end of Trump? In five months, exactly 25 weeks from today, I turn 50 years old. I just passed the halfway point of my one-year Countdown to 50. This…

Last year at this time, I was obsessed with the idea of 2020 being a new decade of Vision. It was built in the name. 20. 20. I bought a photo album to put newly pasted collages of inspiration. I pulled the NY Times card-stock travel pamphlets from the recycling…

A quarter of the year has passed since I started my countdown to my 49th birthday. It all seems silly- this counting, but I made a commitment to do it, and I will honor my commitment. A quarter of the year has passed, 18 weeks have come and gone. A…

Irene Joy Caplan ( June 10, 1944 - September 22, 2020) Irene compiled these hand written poems in a little booklet in 1988. When she wrote them she was in her forties and mourning the loss of her first son, Chuck, who died as a teenager after battling cancer. Her…

What If I Tell Myself 50 Positive Things I need to Hear “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” James Baldwin I…

Do you have an inner “con” man? My inner con woman tells me to conform; to stay safe, stay silent, and not write. Women writers, please help me defy her. The little lies I tell myself are invisible. I can’t see them, so I pretend they don’t exist. The little…

I woke up to my whiteness at 45 years of age. At 47, I started a countdown. Two years have passed, I am now 49 years old. — It is my birthday. I’m 49 years old and now am counting down, 12 months, 52 weeks until the big 5-0. I am challenging myself to write and post on Medium every month of my countdown. Month 12, Week 48. Here it is. …

Celebrating Mother’s Day with 2020 vision on my priorities June 2018: I decided to leave the drama classroom and pursue my own theatre projects. There was a play and a solo show I wanted to write. I tried to avoid thinking I was a “stay at home mom” and more…