Patricia Wild’s Blog
Slough of Despond
Is it slew? Is it slahw-rhymes with cow? Does it matter? No. What matters, Pilgrim, is that you and I stay in this ...
Who’s In The Frame?
Needing to do some in-person banking yesterday (where, wearing a mask, my glasses so thoroughly fogged up I could barely ...
“Opening like air, like realization”*
This year, Coming Out Day prompted me to recall the first time someone came out to me—almost fifty years ago ...
White Rooms
Because decisions get made that reinforce white hierarchies every day, it would be good if the culture of whiteness were marked and ...
Excerpt 3: Strands
On a propitiously spectacular early-summer Sunday, maybe fifty of us, maybe a hundred, most of us White, most of us ...
That’s a Good One
She’d been badass once. Had you’d ambled through the New Hampshire woods when oak tree leaves were the size of ...
Excerpt 2: Strands
[Here is an excerpt from a memoir I'm working on—Strands.] Grief does not appear solely through tears; it is also ...
Excerpt 1: Strands
[Since I am both proud of what I am currently working on and, apparently, unable to do more than one ...
“Feeding off the Vibe”*
Zoom has become a daily feature in my life, much-needed yet disquieting. Yes, I long for connection with others; I ...
How Can I Keep from Singing?
Almost home from our daily walk, just as we were walking past, we saw a neighbor we didn't know come ...
Talk to the Hand
[This story centers on someone whose identity I should protect. So will be using the they pronoun.] Yesterday on a walk, ...
Cover Your Mouth!
More than forty years ago, when my oldest daughter was in elementary school, we'd lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut's historic district, ...
What I’m Taking On For Lent
I'm not giving up anything this year; I'm taking on something. Something I've been afraid to take on for most ...
Butter-knifing
Here I am, once again, "circling Fort Knox with a butter knife trying to figure out how to get in."* ...
It’s Complicated
Back in the day when I taught homeless women in greater Boston shelters, one of my students, young and lovely, ...
Fallow
[Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California, after a fire.] When I was working on WellingUp.net, I told its web developers: "You ...
Do I Matter?
[This 2007 photograph of an El Salvadoran mural taken by Alison McKeller.] This week I heard a story, a story ...
Muscle Memory
One Sunday morning every December, my Quaker meeting shortens its morning worship to put on a fifteen-minute Christmas pageant. Directed ...
Two Toucans Touching
Sometimes I exchange books with a dear friend. Sometimes I'll notice intriguing titles or descriptives in a box of give-aways ...
The Big Picture (Or As Much of It That’s Currently Available)
What I'm about to write may seem ridiculously obvious. And political—not spiritual. And yet this Ah Hah feels Spirit-given: Yesterday ...
Just The Facts, Folks
In order to be very, very careful, I must leave out most of the salient details that would make this ...
![This 2007 photograph of an El Salvadoran mural taken by Alison McKeller.]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_Salvador_killed_more_than_75.000.jpg){kind=link}