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Travel Romance: To All the Foods I’ve Loved Before

August 14, 2019Blog, memoir, TravelWrite a comment17 views

One of my favorite parts of travel is trying the local foods. Whether I’m traveling across the country or the world I love finding something new to taste. But leaving these new loves behind is hard too. When you taste something really good and find that you can’t get it back home, it can be a heartbreaking. I’m traveling to New York in a few weeks, and thinking about the tasty foods I’ll get to eat while I’m there. I’m also swooning about all my past loves from travels that I will likely never eat again.

When I visit New York, there are two food items that are tops on my list: babka and knish. Both are Jewish bread-based items. Babka is a loaf of bread with swirls of cinnamon or chocolate. A knish is savory individual pastry with sauerkraut or potatoes, although I’ve seen them with sweet cherry filling as well.

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BOOK REVIEW: Inheritance

August 7, 2019Blog, Book Review, memoir3 Comments19 views

Dani Shapiro had been questioned her whole life about her ethnicity. With blond hair and blue eyes, even though her parents were Orthodox Jews, people had told her from the time she was a baby that she couldn’t be Jewish. And then in her mid-50s she received the shock of her life after taking a DNA test. This is the story told in her memoir Inheritance.

Shapiro took the over-the-counter DNA test on a whim at the request of her husband. When the tests come back, she compares it with a test her half-sister and discovers that her father is not her biological father. Shapiro is quickly able to figure out who her biological father is through the test results, the Internet, and some help from an acquaintance who is active in genealogy.

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Dani Shapiro DNA test identity Inheritance

Remember That!? Driving Across the Country to See a Yucca Plant

August 1, 2019Blog, memoir, Travel12 Comments52 views

As she looked out the window she wondered when we would stop. At least that’s what I imagine my mom was thinking as I look back to that desert car trip.

“That’s a nice yucca plant.”

She had said it so many times that day, now years later, we still remember it. My older sister and I use it as an easy joke when we are in the car together when one of us wants to stop, but the driver keeps pressing on.

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memory Reminiscence Bump

We Are the World Blogfest: The Friendship Bench Project

July 26, 2019Blog14 Comments34 views

Today I’m participating in We Are the World Blogfest. More about that at the end, but basically, it’s a chance to share positive news. This month I wanted to talk about the Friendship Bench – Zimbabwe project.

The Friendship Bench – Zimbabwe project is a project started in Zimbabwe to help people dealing with depression and anxiety. There is a treatment gap in Zimbabwe where there is one psychiatrist per 1 million people.

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#WATWB Anxiety Depression Friendship Benches Mental Health We Are the World Blogfest Zimbabwe

An Ode to Jello: Are Writing Prompts a Recipe for Creativity?

July 19, 2019Blog, memoir8 Comments41 views

I was traveling this week for work so instead of writing something new, I went back into my archive of writing and found something I wrote a number of years ago. It is based on a prompt from the book Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg.

This book provides prompts to help you start writing. The focus is on memoir so the prompts tend to be around items that will jog your memory and help you dig into your past. Some of the prompts are long and open-ended, but others are more specific and fun like the one I’ve included below.

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creativity Jell-O Jello Natalie Goldberg Old Friend from Far Away Writing Prompts

Book Review: Imagine Wanting Only This

July 10, 2019Blog, Book Review, memoir3 Comments19 views

Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir Imagine Wanting only this raises many questions and has many themes, but the book doesn’t necessarily answer them. We follow Radtke as she deals with the death of a favorite uncle, becomes engaged to a man we know she is not suited for, goes to grad school, and travels the globe extensively often visiting ruins and other abandoned buildings.

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Imagine Wanting Only This Impermanence Isolation Kristen Radtke Loneliness

The Reminiscence Bump: The Most Memorable Time of Our Lives

July 3, 2019Blog, memoir8 Comments28 views

If you were to think about your life, what period would you remember best? If you said your teens and 20s, you’re not alone. There’s even a name for the phenomenon. It’s called the reminiscence bump and researchers have been studying why our adolescence and young adulthood is so memorable for more than 30 years.

The basic idea of the reminiscence bump is that people over the age of 40 remember more memories from the age of between 10 or 15 to 30 than any other time in their life. Studies have been replicated across cultures using different types of cues, recalling vivid, the most important, autobiographical, and stories they would put in a book about their life.

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20s adolescence coming-of-age identity memory Reminiscence Bump teens

Aging Wisdom From A Few Of My Favorite Old Spices

June 26, 2019Blog, memoir11 Comments38 views

I have a lot of positive aging role models. My mom is 85 and until recently seemed unstoppable. A few weeks ago she fell and broke her femur. It has slowed her down a bit, but just for a while. After a short period of recuperation, she has every intention of getting back to her life which includes living independently in our childhood home, volunteering, traveling and senior Zumba.

I spent the past weekend with her, with the intention of helping her, but she didn’t really need much assistance. While I was there, she had visits from a few more of my positive role models. Her sister, who is 84, visited one evening. And her brother, 83, and his wife visited the next.

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Give a Little Respect: How Do you Address Your Elders?

June 19, 2019Blog, memoir6 Comments21 views

As I rounded the corner of my parent’s house, I nearly ran into my neighbor, who also happened to be my godfather. He was walking on the cement sidewalk that ran along our house and next to the short fence surrounding their patio.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi, Bill,” I said.

There wasn’t much more to say so we continued on our way. Nothing too remarkable in the day of a child.

Except later, my dad stopped me, “Did you see Dr. C before?”

I nodded.

“Did you call him Bill?”

I nodded.

“Don’t do that. You call him Dr. C.”

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Migraines: Everyone Gets Them, No One Really Gets Them

June 12, 2019Blog10 Comments24 views

This is my second post in honor of national Migraine and Headache awareness month. You can read the first here about finding relief from migraine here.

I have had migraines and headaches for more than 30 years, since I was about 14. It would seem after three decades of headaches and their wicked stepsister, the migraine, that I would know everything there is to know about them. But the truth is, I don’t. And judging from my fellow sufferers, I am not alone.

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