Archive Page 3

A year and a half ago, I was in the doldrums. The book I was working on was going nowhere, I had allowed my private practice to languish, and the community service endeavor I was engaged in had come to a natural end. I felt aimless and dissatisfied in my new hometown of Ashland, Oregon.
A [...]

I remember taking Scholastic Aptitude Tests back in high school. In my memory, each one feels and looks the same. A ball of fear burns in my gut as I walk into the exam room. The room is filled with neat rows of desks, and its bland, beige walls bear not a speck of decoration. [...]

You’d think that putting up a clothesline would be a fairly simple task. For non-worriers it no doubt is. For people like me who tend to be not only worriers but also ruminators, a task like this takes on the dimensions of building something like, say, the Golden Gate Bridge, which at the time of [...]

My name is Carolyn Shaffer, and I’m a worrier—in recovery. I joke that I was born worried into a long line of women worriers. I can’t recall life in the womb, but I do remember being a five-year-old girl walking hand in hand with my mother through the quiet San Francisco neighborhood where we’ve just [...]