Drat, it was just no use! I snapped off my car radio, delivering non-stop updates about the latest ways humans have destroyed themselves and others interspersed with coverage of the latest Republican presidential debate, hoping to return to the quiet center within, only to discover that Oreos TV commercial stuck in my head again. The […]
Without forgiveness I will still be blind
(Here’s an excerpt from my latest book, Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness, now discounted for the holidays on Amazon.) I lay awake in the middle of the night as I sometimes do, adrift in that yawning chasm of lonesome silence in which my ego thoughts spring to life like taunting little toys, raucously reviewing problems […]
The miracle just looks!
The groomer had unceremoniously announced that my little dog was now a senior citizen at the tender age of seven. Leading me to the horrifying calculation of my own age in dog years, as if the many human years I’d put in had not been trying enough! Kayleigh stared up at me, crestfallen, from beneath […]
Yours for the asking
I sat on the couch, attention having drifted once again to the inner dilemma du jour (or would that be la nuit?) from another recorded episode of the foodie talk show The Chew, in which the cast had been transported to Orlando’s Epcot Theme Park for some kind of culinary festival involving countless celebrity chefs […]
Where is heaven?
“Where is heaven?” I asked, but he only shook his head and smiled. My imaginary inner professor and I peered down from our perch on a hillside overlooking the City of Denver, still shrouded by the sepia haze of smoke from the wildfires consuming unprecedented miles of forest and the lives of courageous firefighters in […]
Leaving on a jet plane
Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness
My new book, Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness, has just been released on Amazon in paperback and for Kindle. Here’s the book description: In Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness, Susan Dugan continues to recount her personal journey in learning to change the purpose of our relationships from rooting ourselves more deeply in a childish dream of […]
Salvation of the world depends on me
Another freshly minted year hot off the presses and already the parade of problematic projections (really, are there any other kind after a certain age?) seemed more than one dream figure could possibly wrap her puny head around. My elderly father-in-law’s sadly deteriorating health seemed to manifest in an increasingly convoluted series of daily crises […]
The two rooms
“Have I mentioned lately how much I just love Thanksgiving?” I asked, while standing at the kitchen sink, drying yet another drainer full of pots and pans. “The way it’s all about just being grateful for this wonderful world of ours. For the blessings of family, and friends, and food and, you know; God-damn pumpkins.” […]
Seeing Purple
(First published this essay two years ago but it seems just as appropriate today as we approach the elections!) “You do not offer God your gratitude because your bother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if […]