The Story Economy Blog

  My cat and my town are both named Madeira, and right now, they are both having some problems. My Cincinnati suburb of 9,000 and my honey-colored tabby are each acting out because they are uncomfortable with change. The cat is pretty…

The house is quiet for the first time in five months. Masks in hand, my children are going back to school this morning. To fifth grade and seventh grade. Back to the school they haven’t seen the inside of since March 13th. Back to their friends. Back…

This is the first summer since 2010 that I’ve been home, like really home. The past nine summers all involved intense traveling and working long days to write scripts for live corporate events, like sales meetings. Since in-person meetings are not a…

I’m trying to make May be May, but it’s not going so well. Everything that is May to me—family gatherings, milestone celebrations (someone is always graduating in a family as big as mine), anticipation of summer, planning vacation—is not…

I’m an empath, which means I tend to feel others’ emotions as my own. In the first days of the coronavirus shutdown, all I felt in my community was fear. I couldn’t run up the main street of my small town without crying. I would inhale everyone’s…