Depression, Gift, and Legacy
For Johnny, of course My mother has been dead a year now, and it has taken me this whole time to begin to find value in her faults as much as her virtues. For much of my adult life, I’ve been in flight...
View ArticleDead Calm at Sea
It’s Monday morning as I write this post. Monday morning, with all that implies: back to work (or school), back to the grind, back to those five days we get through until the next weekend. Wednesday as...
View ArticleThe Work Awaits, Part Two
Almost exactly two years ago, I made my Good Letters debut with a post titled “The Work Awaits,” in which I wrote about my vocational insecurities and obstacles, and how living out my life as a writer...
View ArticleThe Cost of Writing the Truth
I remember my mother used to go to bed for the day. The blackness of her mood seemed to darken her room. I don’t know why she left her door open. Maybe she knew, even in her unresponsive state, that...
View ArticleLamenting an Imperfect Friendship
Walking on the sidewalk of Spokane, I read an email that made me stop still. I’d just left a reading of North of Hope on my first trip away from my husband and two young children, when I checked my...
View ArticleFor the Time Being
Guest Post By Jan Vallone I recently ran into a good friend who’d been battling depression for years. She looked radiant. She smiled and said a therapist had healed her; he’d taught her to live wholly...
View ArticleThe Truth Told Slant
Guest Post By Jan Vallone Every winter I plunge into darkness. As Seattle days shorten to eight hours with clouds covering most of the sky and the city readies for ten months of showers, my inner world...
View ArticleThe Cave of the Heart
Not long ago a young man announced on a video chat site that he intended to kill himself, and that he would let people watch, if only he could have help setting up the video feed. Someone gladly...
View ArticleMedicating the Religious Mind
I’ve been taking an antidepressant for six months now. Psychiatry wins: I’m a more functional human. I don’t feel so isolated and restless. The tasks of daily life don’t seem impossible. Even the...
View ArticleLosing the Thread
Guest post by Michael Leary After someone commits suicide you begin to filter through everything you know about them in the hope of gleaning all that remains good and beautiful and true. At first, this...
View ArticleWe Who Are Left Behind
“Why’d you let go?” Conrad Jarrett shouts at the ceiling, in a climactic scene in Ordinary People. Conrad’s family has unraveled after a boating accident took his older brother, and after his own...
View ArticleRiding the Waves
My sons argue over Avengers characters. The littlest insists he’s Captain America. Another claims Hawkeye. There’s an argument over Ironman. They resolve it by awarding that honor to me, given that I’m...
View ArticleAmerican Idol: A Guide for Hearing God’s Voice, Part 2
Continued from yesterday. While many desires prompt goodness, others trigger evil and thus can’t be signs of our vocation to love. Ignatius called these desires disordered, meaning that a God-given...
View ArticleMy Mother, My Daughter, Myself
My daughter Anna Maria was born on Orthodox Easter Sunday—Pascha—six years ago. That year, the date fell on April 19. While her brother had blasted his way into the world at the very bottom of the...
View ArticleSugar, Sugar, Part 1: June 10, 2011
I’ve written before about my father’s alcoholism. From my adolescence until his death, I spent a lot of time and energy being angry with him, and letting myself be hurt by him. At the core of my anger...
View ArticleSugar, Sugar, Part 2: May 8, 2015
Continued from yesterday. When the editors of Good Letters first asked if they could rerun my 2011 post on my sugar addiction, which was posted yesterday, I couldn’t even bring myself to read the old...
View ArticleIn the Marrow of Depression and Anxiety
By the time you read this, I’ll be feeling much better. Therapy will have commenced, medications will have been adjusted, and clinging to the One who clings to the brokenhearted will have kept me...
View ArticleA Good Fight: Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night)
If a pair of writer/directors exists that can rival Joel and Ethan Coen for a body of work with profound depictions of humanity, it is another set of brothers. The films of the Dardennes, Jean-Pierre...
View ArticleConference Envy: A Survival Guide
Yesterday I was running around the park in a T-shirt with a birthday party full of seven-year-olds. Today, I walked downtown through a flurry of hard, tiny pellets of snow that I couldn’t escape from....
View ArticleThe Cost of Writing the Truth
I remember my mother used to go to bed for the day. The blackness of her mood seemed to darken her room. I don’t know why she left her door open. Maybe she knew, even in her unresponsive state, that...
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