The Murphy Boys

Yesterday when we were at Logan waiting for our plane to take off we were sitting on a ramp in a very crowded hallway.  There was a toddler who kept walking over to Shiya and pointing at him… “Look at the baby!”, he would exclaim happily.  The mom and I would smile because this this little boy was only half of Shiya’s age. One time as he toddled away from us up the ramp, Shiya looked at me and said, “Where is his brother?” “I don’t know,” I responded.  “I’m not sure that he…read more

I started this blog post sitting in the salon, getting my hair colored.  I told Jessika (who does my hair) that my entire inner self is changing and I want my outer self to be obviously different as well.  I told her that she can do anything she wants… turns out that she cut my hair short in the back and longer in the front with chunky stripes of bright blonde in my dark brown hair.  My face is almost entirely framed in blonde.  It’s shockingly different and for that…read more

Shiya has been having a great time in New Hampshire with his relatives, but especially enjoying his cousins.  There’s an ease with cousins that can be different than the relationship even with a close friend.  And Jonah and Orion have really been looking out for Shiya, including him in their play, taking care of him. Tomorrow we will head to Boston and spend a night in a hotel before leaving from Logan on Thursday morning.  (We were supposed to fly out to Richard and Christa’s engagement party in St. Louis…read more

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the…read more

there is such a hole where ayrie should be.  i know he’s in my heart (as shiya reminds me) but i miss that smile, those curls, the curiosity, the hugs, the caring, the wonder, the awe.  my teacher.  my love.  you are greatly missed every day but with a great sense of loss these days, the holidays, the days that mark the passing of time. i am reading about mindfulness.  Listening to my breathing.  Reading ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl and the ‘The Miracle of Midfulness’ by Thich Nhat…read more

no story to go with this photo… I’m just appreciating Shiya tonight and his immense healing abilities.

At the workshop ‘Healing on Purpose’ Richard Leider stated that “We are not a body with a soul, we are a soul with a body.”  This blew my mind.  I had never thought of this before… I had never even really considered the soul before. Since that moment in the workshop I have read this sentiment or variations of it many times.  But I still remember quite viscerally hearing that idea for the first time.  It felt like a small, quiet awakening. This morning as I was getting Shiya into…read more

A quote from “A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver in Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories.  The quote below is spoken from the point of view of a mother saying goodbye to her son’s body at the morgue. “No, no,” she said. ” I can’t leave him here, no.” She heard herself say that and thought how unfair is was that the only words that came out were the sort of words used on TV shows where people were stunned by violent or sudden deaths.  She wanted…read more

Another quote from John Burnside’s essay in Poetry Review, “Travelling into the Quotidian: Some notes on Allison Funk’s ‘Heartland’ poems” (2005) “It takes the patience – or the perversity – of a saint to live alone in a state of grace; the rest of us want to speak about that bourne from which we have, miraculously, returned. Or rather, not to speak, but to sing. It will seem, more often than not, that our off-map experiences are utterly private and beyond communication.” Wow and wow and wow.  This what I am…read more

I recently read a beautiful essay in Poetry Review by John Burnside called “Travelling into the Quotidian: Some notes on Allison Funk’s ‘Heartland’ poems” (2005).  Burnside writes about the ability of poetry to heal because they can get beyond words, overcome the natural barrier that language presents. “Metaphors are the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about,” says Hannah Arendt; and healing could fairly be described as an attempt at oneness, a renewal of the connection to the continuum of the real, a discipline for happiness.”…read more