Blog: Cackles from the Crone’s Nest

Before I make you laugh, it's my job to make your cry, so just warning you. I am on Day Four of a residential treatment program for anorexia. I'm not allowed to flush the toilet. Someone always has to check what I've left in the toilet to make sure it isn't my meal, and I … Continue reading No flushing, no coffee – My trip through recovery from anorexia

I am a week away from turning sixty-one. For about forty-three years, I have held a vice-like grip and awareness of even the tiniest changes in my body, as a bird noticing a feather out of place, or a bumble bee who notices one too many pollen grains on her hind leg. This awareness isn’t … Continue reading STARVATION – THE LOOKING GLASS LIES

I am now thirty-two days post bilateral knee replacement surgery, and I thought I’d share some of the surprising and often humbling lessons and experiences so far. I hope you can make it through all this. I tried to make it entertaining. Knees, I command you to extend! I never imagined that one of the … Continue reading Perspective – A Knee’s Eye View

On January 22, 2019, my old knees were put to rest, and in their place, new knees were born of a surgeon’s hands. He smoothed the rough and road-worn bone surfaces, so misshapen by arthritis that almost any activity caused pain, and put in two brand new joints. In the past weeks, I knew I … Continue reading Thank you Knees – A Runner’s Tribute

It is Sunday and I am talking on the phone with a woman who suffers from what I call the “Not a Good Enough Mother” dis-ease. She questions, labors and moans over her imagined inadequacies. Her teenage son is like a wild horse. Perhaps some memories linger at a cellular level of a war his … Continue reading The Good Enough Mother – Wounding, Sewing, and Scarring – By Kimball C. Pier

Wounding Words Her mother eyed her up and down when she was eleven, her breasts tiny little buds and her body preparing itself to transition by adding an extra layer of flesh to protect her through her passage into womanhood… "I hope you don't develop a big ass like your father's mother, " pointing out … Continue reading Bones and Whispers ~ An Essay on Invisible Girls – By Kimball C. Pier

“Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper” by Rainer Maria Rilke Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains in his own … Continue reading Listening for Your Calling – by Kimball C. Pier

by Kimball C. Pier  What my “Wine Self” said……  Wine is good for me. It prevents something…maybe heart disease or high blood pressure? I only drink this much or that much…never more…well hardly ever. Okay maybe sometimes. I never touch hard alcohol. My sister loves gin martinis. So did I, and I loved drinking martinis … Continue reading “WINE MIND”

  This poem is for all women who have sat stunned in the courtrooms as their abusive partners or husbands are given little more than a slap on the wrist for committing acts of violence, often repeatedly, and without consequence. The laws are still antiquated in many states, making it so that female victims are … Continue reading When his Gavel Went Down

  As I left the diagnostic imaging center after a particularly disturbing mammogram, I wondered why men are allowed to be obstetricians and gynecologists. It never made sense to me. And I wonder why Western medicine assumes that it is perfectly appropriate for male physicians to be involved in women’s breast care, and that women … Continue reading The Spa Mammogram