Grief Archives - Soft In Hard Places

What Do You Know?

LisaPullenKent — Tue, 17 May 2022 00:00:25 +0000

I held some strong convictions when I was young. I just knew what I knew was true because, well, “when you know, you know,” right? But I didn’t know what I didn’t know. For most of us, we often miss … Continue reading →

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Not So Long Ago and Not So Far Away

LisaPullenKent — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:11:08 +0000

Contemplative by nature, the isolation of this COVID year has forced constant and not always welcome introspection. Magnetically drawn to the tales of Storybooke, the fictional town inhabited by intersecting Continue reading →

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Antidote to Disillusionment*

LisaPullenKent — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 02:39:23 +0000

*Reading given at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbia, online, August 9, 2020 “Always have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” Maya Angelou In what do I place my trust? This profound, existential … Continue reading →

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Cancer in a COVID World

LisaPullenKent — Fri, 08 May 2020 20:29:55 +0000

Lately, my emotions are scrubbed up raw. Tender, like new skin. My nerve endings fire all the time. I feel everything without a buffer, as if there are no more desensitizing layers laid down with busy, distracted, numbing activity. Continue reading →

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View From A Quarantine

LisaPullenKent — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:06:38 +0000

”Is this our new normal?” we find ourselves wondering, though we know it can't go on forever. For now, though, we have nowhere to be except right where we are and that has never happened. I recognize it for the miracle that it is. But on Day eleventy-seven of our release from the confines of routine, I'm starting to feel a little adrift. Continue reading →

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Resurgent Hope

LisaPullenKent — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 21:28:16 +0000

I read once that Canadian geese are monogamous, that most couples stay together all their lives. Considering the brutality of life in this wild world, I find that to be an inspiring example of devotion, applicable to the human condition, particularly in our postmodern reality. Continue reading →

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The Way Home

LisaPullenKent — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 04:38:53 +0000

I went to church this morning—on my couch. A dutiful daughter, I spent the first half of my life in religious prostration, and then I left. But detachment from dogma meant disconnect from community and I wandered, people-less into my … Continue reading →

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Love in the Stitches

LisaPullenKent — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 01:22:02 +0000

The older I get, the more I’m drawn homeward. When the weather turns cold, my craving for soup on the stove, a fire in the hearth, and time to knit begs to be slaked. Chilly temps find me cruising arts … Continue reading →

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Swallowed in Sorrow

LisaPullenKent — Wed, 31 May 2017 00:12:14 +0000

In the hush of the hotel room I hear cars rushing by on the busy interstate. Above the hum of the fan, a far-off siren rises and recedes. It’s late. My teenage daughters make their cozy bed on the pullout … Continue reading →

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And So This Is Christmas … Let The Grief In

LisaPullenKent — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 00:45:18 +0000

It’s late December, only days to Christmas. The kids are out of school and it’s dark already at 4:30 pm. All the lights burn in the kitchen where my husband is busy making sugar cookies with our girls. Flour dusts … Continue reading →

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