I was perfectly visible until junior high. But by the end of 7th grade, I was gone.

Back in my small elementary class of 22 kids, everyone was seen and known. …

TRANSFORMATIONS

Everybody loves the idea of a caterpillar. The nearly rabid fervor over these unremarkable, oozing worms is not about who they are, of course, but who they will become. With just a two-week spa retreat and silk wrap, this plump and ordinary slug reemerges as a magnificent flying spectacle of…

JOBS OUTLOOK

Back when everyone hunted and gathered for a living, no one worked for the money, or the weekend, because neither existed. The point of every job was to make other people’s lives better. Workers earned not only a just living but, more importantly, secure inclusion in the power and safety…

LOSS

When I was twenty-one, my mom was murdered. Yep, this is a hell of an opening line, and probably even more so for me since I don’t talk about it a lot. At least, I haven’t so far. But I want to change that.

After I got that devastating phone…

THE SEARCH FOR MEANING

As if it wasn’t enough that we have to deal with the uncomfortable awareness of our own mortality, we’re also damned to reckon with this preposterously inexplicable, physics-and-mind-bending universe, brazenly stretching to infinity in all directions.

I’d be delighted to attribute the whole thing to an organized and purposeful God…

COMIC THERAPY

I’ve spent most of my life trying to prove that I’m worthwhile. And the rest of it asleep.

I don’t know why it’s always been like this. …

CONNECTION COMICS

We literally come into the world tethered to another person. Usually, there are doctors, nurses, fathers, doulas, and other assorted bystanders there too.

And when we die, there are frequently people there as well, sometimes holding our hand as we pass.

Still, my mom used to repeatedly chant the mantra…