Invent Your Own Goddess
Invent Your Own Goddess When pagan author Donna Henes was almost fifty she developed a surprising habit. She began praising herself over even the smallest thing. “Good girl!” she would say to herself if she took the stairs instead of the elevator, or if she really did drink eight glasses of water in a day. […]
What Are Women Made Of?
What Are Women Made Of? As I child, I remember reciting, What Are Little Girls Made of? Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice. Somehow, that never seemed right. The girls and women I knew were made of stronger stuff. Wanting to better define this, I began interviewing women as a graduate student and never stopped. […]
A Politically Correct Scapegoat?
A Politically Correct Scapegoat? Anthropologists have long debated the idea that targeting certain members of a society as “others” who don’t deserve care and respect has survival value for the group as a whole. If we assume that people have inborn tendencies toward violence, then focusing blame on a subgroup might support the cohesion of […]
My Debut Novel
My Debut Novel – and I’m 72 And never once has a publishing professional asked about my age There are a few, vanishingly rare, incidents in life when the stars line up in such a way that you begin to doubt the evidence of your own senses. As in, I’ll wake up soon, because this […]
Adjusting to the Now, Over and Over Again
Adjusting to the Now, Over and Over Again Last week I attended a conference in Santa Fe, Quest 2026, all about vivid aging for older women. One of the speakers was Kat Miller, a counselor and pro-aging activist who talked about falling in love with impermanence (“Crazy, right?” she said). Kat urged each of us […]
The Gray New Deal
The Gray New Deal My first published novel, The Gray New Deal, is appearing as I turn 63. In the novel, seven seniors who shared a college co-op in Austin fifty years ago reunite to create another co-op. Together, this intentional community navigates Trump 1.0 and the first years of the pandemic. They’re a diverse […]
