We can grow as individuals and as a community (locally, nationally and internationally) by examining our views of death, what they say about us, and how it can help us while living.
Author Archives: Heidi Parton
A Five-Minute Game of Jungian Analysis
My husband Eric found this article on a friend’s Facebook page, and loving self-psychoanalysis as much as we do, we had to play it. Our answers were pretty compelling and spot-on, so I thought I’d share mine here. (If you want to play the game, too, click the link before reading below; if you try to […]
Magical Poetry: Publication News
Just in time for the magical Hallowe’en season (oh yes, it’s a full-on season at my house), I am happy to announce that one of my poems, “A Spiral Upward,” will appear in the upcoming fall/winter issue of Witches & Pagans Magazine. I don’t yet know what the release date is, but I’ll announce when it’s available […]
Broken Bowl, Repaired
A few months ago, I was killing time by meandering through the Columbia Museum of Art one Sunday (free admission day!), babywearing Espen while he napped (the quiet and dimness of the museum was so soothing to him), while Eric was in a meeting with a client. I make a point to drop into the Asian art […]
In Memoriam: Robin Williams
I’m taking the news of Robin Williams’ death kind of hard. It’s kind of embarrassing because I didn’t know him; he was a celebrity. On a personal level, we had nothing to do with each other. And still, I felt like I knew him. Part of it is shock, which always comes with sudden death, […]
The One Where I’m Pissed Off at the Entire Country
Listen to these lyrics: It amazes me how relevant that song still is. So relevant, in fact, that every single line represents an aspect of the current state of our culture, be it the militant partisanship, gun control issues, the war between the generations, or the upswing of political activeness from all directions (without most […]
A Note On Understanding
The following is an abridged version of an editorial I wrote for American Athenaeum Magazine’s “The Understanders” issue in Winter 2012. The summer before last, a high school friend of my husband, who was also becoming a friend of mine, asked me one night, out of the blue, “How are you so nice to people?” I was surprised by […]
F is for Feeling / T is for Thinking
For the longest time, I have been absolutely, frustratingly confused about whether I’m more of a Thinking type or a Feeling type. The confusion, as usual, originates in semantics. In Myers-Briggs terminology, feeling does not equal emotions or caring, and thinking should not be confused with intelligence (which, by the way, I define as being analytical and […]
For Your Reading Pleasure
As promised, I’m announcing the release of my latest published poem, “Snake River 1986,” in Subprimal Poetry Art’s Origins and Destinations issue. The poem is a semi-mythical, earth-centered take on the theme of belonging/foreignness that runs through some of my work. Growing up in an Army family has always made the answer to the question, […]
An Early,Vivid Memory
Midsummer in a town outside of Nurnberg, the sun golden and warm, so bright I squint through my eyelashes, a slight breeze tickling my skin. My friend beside me, showing me a blackberry bush, reaching in and pulling out a berry and eating it. I reach in, too, eat a berry. It’s cool from the […]