Not every company had women in those early years. That made rooming complicated in ways nobody had planned for. Civilian colleges let you vet a roommate before you move in. We got assigned three to a room, and if the conflict turned irreconcilable, the fix wasn’t a room change. It was a company change. That’s how much weight a roommate carried. They weren’t just the people you lived with. They were the ones you formed…
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While February is known as the month of love, I think less about romance and more about the love of friends. If anything, it has been the love of my friends that has supported my nearly 40 years of love with my husband, Gary. We live in an age of increasing isolation, losing the deep social capital that once wove our communities together. I count it a privilege in 2025 to live in the same…
4 CommentsTurning the Ordinary into Ceremony My Tuesday started out just like any other, with me looking forward to my weekly coffee visit with MG, who stops by on her way to work. Our “chat” usually involves scrolling through her TikTok feed and sharing funny videos of small animals and babies she knows will make me laugh. But this Tuesday was different. The rhythm broke, as rhythms sometimes do, with sad news. Tea, one of MG’s…
2 CommentsYou know the story. The vain Emperor is tricked into thinking he has been given the most exquisite clothing when, in reality, he is parading through town naked. It took a child in the crowd stating the obvious for everyone to come out of the fog of fear and recognize that the Emperor had no clothes. Reflecting on this story, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to my experience of giving an announcement in…
Leave a CommentIt is easy to think we are one way until something happens, and we see ourselves in a clear and new light. During a cold February, I went on a Caribbean cruise with my adult son, Andrew. He was leaving one job and had a short break before the new job began. I was on a month-long sabbatical. While he was hoping to include other family members, it was a case that those who had…
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