Dear God or Divine Guidance or Jesus, Mary, or Joseph:

Please help me stay optimistic.

Please don’t let me become bitter and brittle.

I struggle every week to be caring, patient, kind, compassionate, and a good listener...

The judges ask the finalists, “Why do you think you deserve to be Miss Fairchild?”

I don’t remember what the two contestants before me said. I am panicky. Skinny me with the coke-bottle glasses and homemade clothes. My heart is racing, racing, racing. They are waiting for me to say something. Anything.

“You can do it,” a cute guy shouts, which intimidates me more.

When forms ask for my religion, I write “creative expression and kindness.” Which always makes harried receptionists smile. Kindness is obvious. Creative expression is a different kind of holy. It’s about caring for our own spirit.

Dear Book Club Friends: Thank you for you. Thank you for us. Books, movies, TV series, politics, setbacks, struggles and joys. Marriages, illnesses, children, miscarriages, divorce, death, work, school, bad bosses, good jobs, no jobs…

What surprises me most about my life right now is how lazy I want to be. I have always been busy, living by lists.

A caregiver’s fashion coping strategy, dressing for neurology, cardiology, radiology, and all the other bland and boring medical waiting rooms.

Yesterday, I texted my friends about the Nantucket Christmas weekend: “Yes, to a dance party. No to a quiet church choral concert. YES, to dressing up for the dance party. Get old, go bold, baby.”

Edgewalkers work on the edge of any group. We are inside enough to be trusted but never part of the tribe. We travel quietly, listen to people’s stories and ask questions, and serve as scouts, firestarters, forecasters, and canaries in the coal mine…

“You know what Catherine Deneuve once said, “It’s your face or your ass,” I tell my old college friends as we sit down for a decadent dinner…