Skip to content

Category: Living Big

You’re My Favorite

The exchange would go like this. My father and I would be somewhere, and in a moment of our banter, he would pause to say, you know Mary, You’re my favorite. My dad’s announcement was usually met with some playful opposition. Dad, you mean I am your favorite daughter in the room with you now? I had, after all, three other well-accomplished and beautiful sisters. So, I had to limit the terms. You’re my favorite?…

3 Comments

The Power of Caring

A Lesson Learned Over 20 Years In the course of my two-decade journey with the Institute for Cultural Communicators, there’s a profound life lesson that has consistently resonated with me. Before speaking to an audience of many or one, I often stop and remind myself, even repeating this saying. I’m eager to share this insight with you, urging you to open yourself to an idea that, while perhaps familiar, may hold more profound significance than…

Leave a Comment

Mary Interruptable

I am not very interruptible. I want to be, but then someone or something comes into my day, and my contradictory reaction signals that I am not as interruptible as I want to be. It seems so astonishing for a mother of nine not to have figured out how to roll with a life of interruptions. I have received a fair number of interruptions, as I am sure you have been, with diagnoses, declarations, and…

2 Comments

Magnificent Magnolia

An essay to the evergreen. Many of you know I purchased my childhood home from my parents in 2003. The most comforting aspect about moving back into my growing-up home doesn’t all reside inside. I was five years old when my parents moved into the house at Ferry Farms. On one side of our property were three huge Magnolias. I don’t remember how two of them were lost, but one still stands in the intervening…

3 Comments

Broken by Beauty

When Gary and I decided to travel to our young friend’s wedding in Northern California, I was excited to put some national parks on the must-see list. We enjoyed our time in Oregon, visiting Crater Lake. We even hiked to the base in the cold weather to view the epic blue lake from the rocky shore level. It was a breathtaking time, and I couldn’t get enough of the cerulean lake punctuated by the sole…

Leave a Comment