By Sherrie Cassel One-hundred years ago a man whose name I can’t remember, so I’ll call him Solomon, gave me some solid advice, and it’s taken me decades to heed it. One-hundred years may have passed him by; he was retired when I met him. He was my first experience with a true empath; I’veContinue reading “To Unlikely Teachers and Oblivious Students”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Sunrays through the Rain
By Sherrie Cassel One of my professors has told me on a few occasions that I have an overdeveloped sense to be liked. Interesting, because early in my life I was a “come closer, go away” kind of person. I prefer community to distance these days. I have a mostly positive outlook on life –Continue reading “Sunrays through the Rain”
Grieving — in the Black
By Sherrie Cassel The lights twinkled on the Xmas tree, a secular tree, but not a secular evening, as she lit the seventh Hannukah candle and chanted her prayer. Incense smoke wafted to the rhythm of the universal energy, and we enjoyed the spiritual nature of our celebration, Hannukah, Christmas, Xmas, or just another dayContinue reading “Grieving — in the Black”
Christmas, Grief, and Oldies
By Sherrie Cassel The lava in the lamp undulates to no sound in particular; it’s rhythm is sure of its random order. No, it’s not oxymoronic. Certainly there is a trend. My husband is unboxing our Christmas ornaments. We have a box he has labeled “Important Ornaments” – Neither of us has an orderly brain,Continue reading “Christmas, Grief, and Oldies”
Moving Day
By Sherrie Cassel They’re moving today, the tempestuous neighbors with their love song of expletives as he beats time on her face, once beautiful and full of life, now beaten — down to the nubs of her nails whose fingers point to bruises, black and purple, yellowing, but never healing. Yes, I called the cops.Continue reading “Moving Day”
Holiday Blues
By Sherrie Cassel No one cares about your stuffy religion; it doesn’t feed the poor, nor does it calm the crazed and crusty people shouting at phantoms, schizophrenics with no access to meds in filthy rags on the sidewalks outside your temples, hoping for crumbs from your king’s table, but there areContinue reading “Holiday Blues”
Tryptophan
By Sherrie Cassel Dishes flying, broken glass, and disorder were not behaviors my dysfunctional family practiced on big holidays, i.e., Thanksgiving and Christmas. Terror was a side dish to our turkey, which we always had. We were “animales” during the other three-hundred and sixty-three days, but presentation is everything and our table always looked beautiful,Continue reading “Tryptophan”
Healing through the Holidays
by Sherrie Cassel No matter how hard we try to push the pain away from the loss of our children, it’s always there, and it takes only one word, or one note of a song to make us double over in pain, or let out a groan as the pain radiates around our hearts andContinue reading “Healing through the Holidays”
Politics, Religion, and Peace
by Sherrie Cassel The end of another hostile election year in America, the country of my birth, the country of my parents’ births, and my grandparents, and their grandparents, etc., has culminated in a loss for some and for others a win. Power waxes and wanes and is sought after homicidally and immorally. Just likeContinue reading “Politics, Religion, and Peace”
Taming the Shrew
By Sherrie Cassel Grad school and internship keep me busy, busy, busy. During the pandemic, I was sheltered in place unless I absolutely needed something from the store. Remember how scarce toilet paper was? I’ll refrain from cracking a crude and inappropriate joke here, but it makes a lot of sense, retrospectively. There is aContinue reading “Taming the Shrew”
Grief to Gratitude 