centre of the universe

Tag: breaks my heart

  • Small Kindnesses

    Small Kindnesses

    When my mom died, we asked people to bring rocks (she liked this Jewish tradition of remembrance) to put in a basket in her memory. Some folk painted rocks, some folks brought little ceramic knickknacks and gewgaws, others brought rocks from their gardens or farms, or maybe just from out in the parking lot. I […]

  • The Last Thing

    Grief is an oscillation between want and have, between need and want, between here and gone. It does strange things to a person. When my mother died I kept saying to my aunt, over and over, “this must be so hard for you”. A Freudian might call it transference. My aunt finally broke and asked […]

  • Close to Home

    Sometimes something happens that hits pretty close to home, but you can’t describe why it hits close to home and you don’t really understand why it’s hitting as close to home as it is. You just know you hurt and this kind of hurt isn’t something your amazing group of support peeps can ameliorate. Then […]

  • Danger Zone

    Please go read this article (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-kelly/the-thing-all-women-do-you-dont-know-about_b_8630416.html). I’ll wait. If you’re already on Twitter, you’ve seen this already. I spent about a decade trying to look not-female (which was tough, given my body shape) and being very angry that I couldn’t go out to the club or the bar without having to be “on guard”. I was […]

  • NEKKIT

    NEKKIT

    I have to start this out with a story about self-confidence. A couple of years ago, when I first started going to the gym, I was showering after my workout at about the same time a shriek of girls were at the pool for their swimming lessons. As is the case with most change rooms, […]

  • So much left unsaid

    “We each of us mourn and grieve the holes our loved ones leave in our lives when they go,” I wrote to my friend yesterday. “When someone dies unexpectedly, that hole doesn’t have soft edges and neatly hemmed openings. It’s a vicious, torn-open wound. The bigger the personality, the bigger the void. Particularly for someone […]

  • Don’t Need to See

    I love radio. I’ve always loved radio. Right now, I love radio more than usual. Just because you can do something, like take photos of dead refugee children, or take live footage of people being shot in the street, doesn’t mean you should use that footage. The best news reporters don’t need to shock their […]

  • Not with a whimper

    I thought I would be much, much older before so many of my friends died. I thought I had more time. That’s the thing, isn’t it? We always think we have more time. Well, we don’t. That’s just the thing. Cherish every single moment because while time is not finite, our lives are. We are so […]

  • It ain’t easy

    This is a difficult post for me to write. To be honest, I don’t even know if it’ll ever get posted publicly. I’m not particularly good at this sort of thing, and the idea that people use their blogs to kind of…I dunno…bleed out all over the place gives me the squickies. So I don’t […]

  • When a Body

    My granddad is in this photo. He’s the kid perched on the plough. It’s his father driving the car. David Henry. My granddad ended up looking just like him. Uncle Reg is beside David Henry, and their neighbours are standing beside the vehicle. This photo was taken in their hometown of Napinka. This has been […]