Higher Power
After my sister was killed, I married a violent idiot, tried to drink myself to death — again — went back to a 12-step program, found an incredible shrink, an apartment, a sponsor, a job, and some tiny hope that I might live despite all the mayhem and chaos and humiliation and lack of sleep and starving myself. I needed a higher power. God was not something I had ever trusted. God didn’t keep my father from drinking, me from drinking, my best friend alive, my sister safe, or anything about the terrible state of the world. Religion was the enemy in my childhood; laced with fear, guilt, remorse, and boredom. Church was a place my cranky grandmother loved beyond anything —
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Be the Parent Your Child Needs
Yes, I have fallen into the labeling trap, helicopter, snowplow, psycho. After so many years of teaching high school and college and coaching teenagers in writing the college admission essay my only suggestion, never advice, is to be the kind of parent your child, teenager, young adult needs. If your offspring is able to make friends easily, advocate for him or herself-give me back that bucket-does not welcome your problem solving, then back off. My son was a climber, a skateboarder, and a talker. He had the confidence of a professional party guest, could chat up a potted plant and was giving advice to grown-ups on home buying at three. Few were strangers especially if they were young and pretty girls or young men with something he coveted.
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Writing Without a Map
Years ago, I went across Europe by train with a Eurorail Pass accompanied by two not-so-nice young women — one was my friend and the other was her friend — and they spoke French to each other, a language I had failed to master despite several years of abusive and/or despairing French teachers. Anyway, you get the picture. We arrived in Florence and they had an itinerary and a map — this was pre-cell phone, and their special language — so I decided not to go with them but to wander off alone with a bit of college Italian and yes, being 20, a sense that I was welcome anywhere. And I was. It wasn’t just Italian men who smiled and made welcoming gestures, but women of all ages, children, and older people, and babies, and dogs and cats
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