I’m here to share some good news. My story, “Tilt-A-Whirl,” has been published in issue 12 of Tahoma Literary Review. How many of us have been to an amusement park? Do you remember the Tilt-A-Whirl? You know, that ride that whips you around and around, your body being pulled one way, your head, and brain, being pulled the other. For some reason, I used to love that vertigo-like feeling as a kid, but that was long before my brain injury. Now, forget it; I’ll take a ticket for the merry-go-round.

If you haven’t had the woozy, though weirdly fun, experience of riding on a Tilt-A-Whirl, then you’re in for a good time: “Tilt-A-Whirl” it invites you, my dear readers, into the dizzying yet sometimes comical life of a traumatic brain injury survivor (me), providing a zoomed-in snapshot of the inner workings of a brain re-wired by trauma. You get to travel along with me as I navigate my way through an afternoon of shopping. (I bet you can’t wait!) While “Tilt-A-Whirl” highlights my own, brain-drain experience, the story is far reaching. Even if you don’t have a brain injury, you may find that you have similar every-day experiences, though with different perspectives, to share. So, all you have to do is click here, and pay a nominal fee of $10.99 for a hard copy; $2.59 for digital (includes 28 other fantabulous literary perspectives on many of today’s social issues). Then buckle up, and enjoy the ride!

If you feel at all light-headed, no worries, it will pass, I promise.

And, please, feel free to invite a friend, or two or three, to ride/read along with you.

Again, enjoy the ride!

I did it! After I spent the better part of four months working on an essay about how I found love after a deadly car crash left me wounded, and feeling ugly and unworthy, it has been published in the The Washington Post. This piece is not for me alone to read and remember how far I’ve come. It is for all of us who have been scarred and fractured by trauma – any kind of trauma. It is for those of you who still feel lost and alone and afraid. My essay, “After a freak car accident, I thought I was too broken to find love,” is my gift to you.

(Sorry if you have already seen the link to the essay.)

I’m over-the-moon excited to announce that my essay, “Reaching for the Keys,” has been published in Saranac Review  It’s about my emotional struggle to take the car keys away from my father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2012. I spent a year and a half working on it – typing, deleting, reflecting, pacing, tearing up drafts and starting over, pulling my hair out, waking up in the night to scratch down notes. Why all the fretting? Though any piece of creative work takes time to craft into a piece of salient art, writing this essay challenged me more than most other essays I have written. How so? While I know I made the right choice by taking the keys away from my father, the act of writing the essay brought me uncomfortably close to particular emotions and a long list of complexities that speak to the human condition (at it’s core, what this essay is really about): fear, anger, remorse, guilt, truth, loyalty, mortality, illness, aging, independence. I suppose that’s partly what creative writing should do – push us a little too close to the edge of the metaphorical embankment.

There’s also an ironic element to the piece, but I don’t want to give too much away here (apologies for the teaser). To quench your curiosity, relieve your hunger, I encourage you to read the essay. The Journal is available for purchase at: Saranac Review.

The Saranac Review was born in 2004 out of four writers’ vision to open a space for the celebration of many voices including those from Canada. Attempting to act as a source of connection, the journal publishes the work of emerging and established writers from both countries. As our mission states, “The Saranac Review is committed to dissolving boundaries of all kinds, seeking to publish a diverse array of emerging and established writers from Canada and the United States. The Saranac Review aims to be a textual clearing in which a space is opened for cross-pollination between American and Canadian writers. In that way, we aim to be a textual river reflecting diverse voices, a literal “cluster of stars,” an illumination of the Iroquois roots of our namesake, the word, Saranac. We believe in a vision of shared governance, of connection, and in the power of art.

~ Saranac Review