Category Archive

I love a cat I do not know. Our shared context: the parking lot where she lives, circling the apartment building where my son lives some of the time with his father, and where I twice-daily leave and then collect my car in the complicated dance of co-parenting, school transport and work commute. I barely registered her as I raced … Read More

Hello and happy autumn! Here in Portland, it’s a crisp, bright afternoon, and I’m feeling quite invigorated to be at my writing desk. Since starting my job as senior writer at a marketing agency six months ago, it hasn’t been easy to prioritize the writing that is closest to my heart. Which is why I’m especially excited to be spending … Read More

Greetings! It’s a gray and wet Sunday morning here in Portland—the kind of day that invites melancholy to rise to the surface of every puddle—and I’m thinking about you writers all over the globe. What are you struggling with and celebrating at this very moment? I get a lot of email (and lately tweets) from writers with questions about writing … Read More

A few weeks ago, I presented at the Field’s End Conference on Bainbridge Island, Washington. It was one of my very favorite conferences, with a level of intimacy and insight that invigorated me and seemed truly enlightening to participants. At this stage in my writing life, I am keenly aware of how much it uplifts me to talk with writers … Read More

Three years after becoming an author, my first official book review–of The Productive Writer, by Marj Hahne–has just been published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books. The review begins: Thank the writing gods that Sage Cohen “compensated for insecurity by being overprepared.” Her second guide for writers, The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write … Read More

It is time for a new way of looking, a new way of seeing. So you take a full-time job after running your own business for 15 years, purchase a used camera that curves right into the palm of your hand, and become a woman on a bus traveling the rain-streaked poetry of Belmont Street into the rumbling belly of … Read More

What if you could be sure a whole self and a whole life awaited you on the other side of divorce? What if divorce was actually an opportunity to discover and claim the truest parts of you? A year and a half ago when my husband moved out, these are the questions I started asking. I was incredibly fortunate to … Read More

As my son climbed out of his bed in the morning, I noticed a strange, misshapen lump where his diaper would normally be. Theo, let’s take a look at what’s going on in those pajamas, I proposed dreamily (it was 5:30 a.m). I stretched the elastic of his bottoms and sort of leapt back. Duct tape! I shouted. On my … Read More

Love Dogs –– Rumi One night a man was crying Allah! Allah! His lips grew sweet with praising, until a cynic said, “So! I’ve heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?” The man had no answer to that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls, … Read More

“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure–your perfection–is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.” … Read More