On This Twelfth Day Of My Diet

Praise Our Choices, Sister, For Each Doorway Open To Us Was Taken By Squads Of Fighting Women Who Paid Years Of Trouble And Struggle, Who Paid Their Wombs, Their Sleep, Their Lives That We Might Walk Through These Gates Upright. Doorways Are Sacred To Women For We Are The Doorways Of Life And We Must Choose What Comes In And What Goes Out. Freedom Is Our Real Abundance.

Memory In Greek Mythology Is The Mother Of The Muses, And It Is So For Me. Both Personal And Societal Memory Move Me Strongly, And That Is One Of The Sources Of My Writing.

I Was A Working Class Jewish Girl. In My Girlhood, Anti-semitism Was A Daily Fact Of Life In Detroit. I Did Not Come From People Who Had Many Options In Their Lives Or Many Choices Open To Them. I Was A Girl In A Family In Which Women Were, As In Society At Large, Very Much Second-class Citizens. I Did Not See Why I Should Accept These Forced Limitations Without A Fight. Being Free To Make My Own Choices Thus Became Very Important To Me At An Early Age.

Sometimes When A Character In A Novel Is Difficult For Me To Enter, I Sue Something In Myself Or In My Own Life As A Doorway Into That Character's Mind And Emotions.

A Strong Woman Is A Woman Who Craves Love Like Oxygen Or She Turns Blue Choking. A Strong Woman Is A Woman Who Loves Strongly And Weeps Strongly And Is Strongly Terrified And Has Strong Needs. A Strong Woman Is Strong In Words, In Action, In Connection, In Feeling; She Is Not Strong As A Stone But As A Wolf Suckling Her Young. Strength Is Not In Her, But She Enacts It As The Wind Fills A Sail.