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“Writing about Place”: Pilgrim Writers Workshop Summary
I’ve been lugging around a memoir about my father’s death for some fifteen, er, twenty years now. I used to think it was in pretty good shape, but I’ve come to realize how much work it needs to go beyond being a sweet story about a middle-aged woman losing the first man she adored. The…
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MayBelle Burns It Up: A Ritual for Welcoming the New Year
For the past several years, MayBelle and one of her dearest friends in the world have gathered on the Winter Solstice to unburden themselves of what they need to let go of from the preceding year, and offer up what they dream about for the 365 days ahead of them. Her friend, having gone to…
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MayBelle’s Former Life
At a social gathering over the weekend, in which MayBelle was not, by a long shot, the oldest person in the room, she was asked this question: “What did you do in your former life?” Granted, the questioner appeared to be younger than MayBelle, maybe even by fifteen years or so if she were to…
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Welcome 2022: MayBelle’s Year of “No”
Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash MayBelle has not been one, usually, to adopt the “word for a year” practice that has been prevalent on social media for several years now. She likes to avoid fads and trends and the like. But this year she’s in, and her word is “No.” (With all due respect to Shonda Rhimes…
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MayBelle Gets More than She Ordered
It doesn’t take much for MayBelle to stop and think of her precious parents. The backdoor neighbor’s cigar smoke makes her hope, just for the tiniest moment, that her father has come for one of their long, rambling conversations that serpentined among politics, religion, books, and culture. He’s been gone for twenty years, and still…
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MayBelle Goes Environmental
MayBelle likes to think she’s pretty conscious about the environment, although it’s unlikely any of her friends would label her a “tree hugger.” She has, in her later years, come to appreciate and enjoy the outdoors much more than she did when she was younger, and anytime she can head over to Radnor Lake in…
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MayBelle Inches Ever Closer Toward Home
Back in 2009, when MayBelle was on a retreat in New England, she wrote this: “I am not at home. I am far away from everything, and everyone, that I have worked so hard to mold into a representation of what home means. In my youth, home was a ranch-style house painted blue-gray in Jackson, Mississippi.…
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MayBelle Gets Her Hairs Done
MayBelle has confronted her thin hair for decades now, so it doesn’t really bother her—not too much at least—when she catches glimpses of her scalp on a sunny day when the wind is up. It’s worse when you loom over her and look down at the top of her head, so please try not to…
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MayBelle Monday: On the Changing Nature of Retail Therapy
MayBelle knows that retail therapy is not often advised by counselors or therapists. Friends sometimes suggest it, thankfully. With Covid, MayBelle has not gotten out to shop much, which is actually a good thing as MayBelle all too often has shopped (and eaten) her feelings instead of processing them. She is working on that. She…
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“MayBelle Monday”: On Being Highly Sensitive During Covid 19
Sometimes MayBelle gets overwhelmed by the world. Pretty often, actually, and fairly easily. Like last month, when she saw a woman on the corner, this one with a sign that read, “Lost job. Can’t feed family. Anything will help.” MayBelle worried about that woman for days. Or that time in 2002 when she forgot to…