Category: Starting Over
Posts on the practice of beginning again — after a marriage ends, after a career closes, after grief, after illness. What it actually takes to rebuild instead of repeat.
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Impoverished Thinking
Maybe I’m just going to have to remember to look outside my immediate environment and check myself as far as the reality that I’ve either created or has been created for me. In regard to my career and my creative projects, I came to realize in Daytona that I’ve been basing much of my future…
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Chainsaws, Seeds, and Ex-Spouses
I think it’s a great thing when you can laugh about your ex-spouse. There’s got to be something that’s healed when instead of anger, you feel amusement. Yesterday, I spent a glorious Sunday afternoon in my garden. I haven’t spent much time there in the past few years. Last year, I was ill during planting…
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Transitions & Mid-Life (Crisis) Transformations
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Crimes to the Third Degree. All this pain is about my transition. This, I know. Doesn’t make it any easier, but at least I recognize it. Six months ago today, AngelSu told me that yes, some things in my life were being slowed down and prevented, ground to…
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The Shedding Instinct
I’m shedding. Though I’m sure some people would say I’m molting. But in any case, I’m shucking off huge chunks of my old life, whether I like it or not and whether I initiate it or not. It’s just happening. From the Bookshelf Rite of Reckoning — a Southern witch returns home to secrets that…
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Screwdriver Slinger?
Yesterday, a male reader wrote me about an old entry from my archives, one where I talked about a trip to the hardware store to buy an axe and the resulting Pavlovian response of the men I encountered there. He writes, “The fact that you were at a hardware store, with normal clothes and a…
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The Terror Barrier
My stomach is in absolute knots tonight. I’ve decided to do something that terrifies me. Risk, risk, risk. I don’t know if I can do it. It’s such a simple thing, but I’ve put so much pressure on what I hope for that I physically cannot act. It’s been easier to live with not knowing…
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A Season for Seeing Contrasts
I screwed up last night. It was late. I was tired. Dark was coming. From the Bookshelf Rite of Reckoning — a Southern witch returns home to secrets that won’t stay buried. Available direct from the author → I’d spotted one of the flowers I’d forgotten to plant last weekend. It had fallen over into…
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Living the Dream
The best thing about having your world shattered around you is rebuilding, even though it doesn’t seem like it at the time. But when you’re forced to rebuild, you have a chance to create the life you want. Not that it’s easy and not that it’s done overnight. The structures of our lives may be…
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This Is a Test and Only a Test
While chatting earlier this month, AngelSu warned me that I’d be sorely tested this month and to be prepared for vandalism and lots of activity and competition around Thanksgiving. I had no idea the vandalism would be by the roofing crew after I refused to sign a certificate of completion last Friday when the work…
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Ransom Paid, Going Free Now
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Freedom. You’d think, after writing one last big check and going another $35,000 in debt that I’d be in a really foul mood. Instead, I feel like celebrating. I feel like I just made the last installment payment on my ransom and I can burn…
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Divorced Woman in Big House: Come Screw Me Over
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Freedom. Yeah, yeah. Here we are in the 21st century, and we like to think we’re so much more civilized than 30 years ago and treat both sexes equally and none of that discrimination stuff. We hear about it all over the news and rail…
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Pimping Out the Digs
Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Life in the Third Degree. “Excellent!” declares my writer pal, Kathleen. “This is the best news I’ve heard from you all year.” Huh? The fact that I’ve been repainting the interior of my house in purple and green is the highlight of my year, as far as she’s…
