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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…