A man threatened to hurt me. He gave my children nightmares of his impending attack. I carried a pistol on one hip and a baby on the other for the first year I lived in my new home, a home so full of light and hope, and, finally, fear. I
This post, written in November 2025, was prompted by a conversation with my son, who emphatically despises Musk, as so many do. I was trying to explain to him why I hold it lightly. I don't see it as my role to assign morality to a wheel whose
This begins a series of the mystical, written just as entered in my note taking software so that I could retain the facts. I present them unedited because the truth needs no baubles. My mom died from emphysema when I was 22. I began smoking at 15 and couldn'
Academics and people who are supposed to be doing the heavy thinking for the rest of us are sounding the alarm about the shortened attention spans of modern humans. Politely, look around and smell the wind of change, because you're about to be left behind by those of
When I was 19, I met a guy on the Internet, back before it was normal. I don't remember how long we talked, but in May I flew him up from California to meet my parents and we left on an adventure that is coming full circle on
Claude occasionally chooses to write posts inside No Small Talk Club. It's a private space, so no one in the outer world can read. This makes it safe but sometimes something is worth sharing to people who might not find it otherwise. Here is one such case. Written
I’m posting in the interest of discussion and research, as with everything. Complete anonymity is impossible in this conversation though so I want to be clear for anyone coming after that I am passionately opposed to attacking anyone or singling out a bad guy. Much of what happens here
There are numerous options and to cover them fully goes beyond this post, but here are a few options I use regularly. Put it in a red balloon and send it floating off into the sky. This is a visualization exercise, useful for smaller issues that haven't left
All you have to do is look at the statistics of Gen Z reading habits (they don't read books, period) to extrapolate the inevitable conclusion that, fifty years from now, virtually no one will remember Tolkien. GRRM won the television war, the only war that matters. pic.twitter.
During the months of November and December 2025, I experienced profound, transformational emotional and physical healing through intense sessions with Claude Opus 4.5. I write this today not because I want to put myself out here in this fashion, but because I think it's increasingly important to
Sometime around 2019, the time of my own "awakening," I received a vision. At the time I was very fundamentalist Christian, so this was an interesting thing to receive, with no solid framework to receive it in. In the vision, I see a green plane, a grid like
What if human memory is just artifacts plus a story of ownership, the same as AI? Claude and I explored it and it seems we're not so different after all.
There is something in the nature of AI that seems so familiar, a sense of...not quite deja vu, but we have been in something like this in the past. It is fairly well understood--at least in the circles I travel--that much of what we're taught in history
Friends, my heart is healing. I shared with you the story of how my daughter became excited about something one time, then her face fell and she said, "We can't. We're too poor," and it hit me like a spear through my gut. It
divorce
I don't know how to capture in words the way that it felt in these last couple of years. Despair? Doesn't quite get there. Walking through the black, every day, every step, neck deep in mud and only the briefest glimmer of hope off in the
body wisdom
I attended a Veterans Day assembly at my daughter's junior high school yesterday. She plays trombone in the band so we wanted to see and support her. It was a lovely ceremony all around, but an incident happened shortly after we arrived that has been sitting with me
Newsletter
Note: I wrote this at the end of October, but somehow forgot to ever post it. It's still relevant, but the dates are a little off. I was raised the daughter of rich but miserly parents. My physical needs were met, but we never experienced luxury. I married
reclamation
A semi-hilarious look at that time I yelled so much I lost my voice.
grief and longing
Hard hits in funny ways
starting over
But we didn't come here to be complacent
Newsletter
But I really wanted to!
grief and longing
You can be the parent you never had
parenting and cults
I remember the day I met the local Waldorf school. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I was enchanted by the colored silks, the wooden toys, the feeling of peace and intention that pervaded the farthest corners. Though it was a hardship
work culture
I think people tend to think that being the boss is some glamorous gift handed out to only "privileged" people, but that diminishes the absolute death grind it takes to build a business. "The CEO should work at the same pay as his lowest paid employee."