Last Wednesday night I manifested a dream. For years, ever since I became a writing workshop leader, I have felt called to offer a class for stepmoms that would teach them what I have learned through experience: that keeping a journal is an invaluable tool for weathering the often stormy seas of stepmothering. In the service of this dream I became a certified Journal to the Self® facilitator and took various classes through the Therapeutic Writing Institute. I took a curricul

To prepare for an upcoming writing retreat in France led by my friend Summer Hardinge, I decided to read Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. I had heard it was wonderful, but I didn’t expect such an erudite, subtle, witty, and philosophically wide-ranging treatment of the topic. Nor did I expect to delve deeply into a traveler’s way of seeing, which really is the same as a writer’s way of seeing. For example, here's what de Botton says about curiosity: Curiosity might be pic