This Mama’s Dharma

I almost forgot to blog about my one year anniversary as a single parent, caught up as I was in the MoTH thing.
I can feel the visceral coolness of that early morning, sitting on the balcony in my ex’s apartment, our ninth wedding anniversary, November 25, 2007.  We smoked a cigarette and he casually told [...]

Ah this, my favorite season.  Season of hope and sadness.  Always, season of beginning and ending.  The Jewish New Year.  The Days of Awe. 
I think back to falls of the past few years.  Fall of 2005.  I was deep into my third trimester of pregnancy…excited and anxious and innocent as could be.  Safe and secure in the [...]

I swear, I swear, I am going to get to bed by 11 pm tonight. 
Today, I was an exhausted mess.  The manic high from BlogHer sent me into a sleepless, hyperaroused state.  I am an easily stimulated type and boy, was I buzzing.
I was so tired that my eyes burned all day long.  This morning, [...]

There are a lot of things that my ex used to do that I never had to worry about.  Car stuff was one of them.  We had a very traditional relationship, and very untraditional too, in that he handled the guy stuff AND most of the girl stuff.  He basically took care of everything Grown-up [...]

I am currently reading a book entitled Dark Night of the Soul by Thomas Moore, and I am very much appreciating the way he puts despair into a cultural and mythological context.  So unlike the bland psychological approaches that dominate our culture today.  Even I, as a professional critic of the mental health industry and [...]

On Friday I had an acupuncture treatment that had me weeping.  I was shocked by the force of my tears.  Here I was, seated, with needles down my spine, my head resting on the treatment table, and the tears hit me at 80 miles an hour.  They came out in a burst and cleared as quickly as they [...]

I remember this feeling.
I like to refer to it as Grinding Loneliness.
And in my better days, I like to refer to it as Much - Needed Solitude.
Right now I am in a Grinding Loneliness verging on a Much-Needed Solitude kind of mood.
But I’m restless.  I considered signing up for JDate again.  Tell me: Noooooooooooooo, don’t [...]

As of about 1:15 this afternoon, I got divorced, in the same DC Superior Court where I married my now ex-husband.
Flashback to 1998. I was 23, and my ex was 25. Our marriage ceremony appointment was scheduled for November 25. As we were getting dressed to go to the courthouse on our [...]

“We’re going to Sami’s house!” Sami crowed from the backseat as we sped down 495 towards home. Never mind that it felt like Dante’s inferno as we stepped out of the airport, never mind that it must be 102 degrees in my bedroom, where the A/C doesn’t seem to reach, never mind that [...]

For some reason, his father and I started calling Sami “Sami su-su” when he was a baby and it has just stuck.
Tonight, my sweet boy woke up at midnight looking for me. I sat down beside his bed for a moment, looking into those huge old-man eyes of his. He stared at me [...]