Tag: life
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Writer’s Retreat
Truly, Smith Mountain Lake is a beautiful place. Something about being there in mid-November was especially serene. No jet skis, although I did spot one brave waterskier tucked into a wetsuit. But mostly, it was just quiet. The wind, strong all weekend, was a constant companion, trying to shake the last of the leaves from…
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Dear Alice
In A Hundred Ways to Say I Love You, love often shows up in small acts: a letter slipped into a suitcase, a line about laundry, a favorite song. When Alice goes away to college, both her parents put their feelings on paper—Don’s meandering and tender, Ruth’s brief but quietly fierce. Two voices, one envelope. These…
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Dear Jojo
This letter was never sent. Molly wrote it during her first semester of college, several months after Jojo’s death. She keeps it in a box with all the notes Jojo wrote her over the years—correspondence that can never be returned. More Letters from Radiant
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The Lowdown: What it’s Like to Die
This piece came to me on the drive home from my eighth night shift in a row. Sometimes Jojo won’t let me rest until I’ve listened to what he needs to say. The moments Jojo remembers here all appear in A Thousand Ways to Say I’m Sorry—but seen through the eyes of the living. This…
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Why Radiant? Why not?
People don’t plan trips to Radiant. It doesn’t even earn a bold font on a map of Virginia—if it’s marked at all. It’s the kind of place Google Maps skips over—not quite big enough to matter, not quite small enough to disappear. But folks find their way to it, detouring off the interstate to get…
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From the Archives: Them’s fightin’ words. Now what did you say again?
Written in 2012, when my oldest daughter Hannah was a teenager and our home was full of both drama and laughter. The moment felt enormous then—now it’s a tender memory, one of many that shaped us both. We survived. We became friends. This is a snapshot of that journey, from a time when the nest…
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Broccoli: Resident Feline, Reluctant Mascot
Why Broccoli? Because even in a story about grief, forgiveness, and family, there’s room for a cat. Broccoli lives on the margins of the human world, but he notices everything. He’s prickly, particular, and unexpectedly tender when no one’s looking. He also has a point of view—literally. In A Hundred Ways to Say I Love…
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Witnesses
Sometimes, the world seems intent on showing you something, just when you most need a sign. There’s a red light on Route 253 I that keeps witness to my mornings. If I catch it, I have to stop, and for a minute, I get to look out over the valley. This morning, the mountains were…
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A Different Stage
Backstage, we wait in the half-light. Costumes on. Hearts full. Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. —Tevye from Fiddler (book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick) In between writing novels and working nights at the hospital, I’ve spent much of the past decade on another kind of stage—community…