I am home. in beauty. “Is Iowa really that pretty?”

A view over the Mississippi at Dubuque, Iowa.

The Mines of Spain, Dubuque, Iowa

A lovely place to begin a new book. The backyard patio. July 2016. Rush Street, Dubuque, Iowa

Freshly picked snacks.

Inspiration from Norah Ephron the day before I began writing I am home.

I have gorgeous winter photos, too, but they are currently in storage in Iowa and I am in Barcelona.

A reader hosting her book club in Kansas next week with I am home. has known me since she was a toddler. When she sent me the club’s questions, she wrote, “You’re getting rave reviews. Someone in the book club asked me how you’re so positive after everything you’ve been through. She asked if Iowa is really that pretty.  I told her it’s prettier than anyone gives it credit for. And I told her you have always seen beauty in everything and you make others appreciate things more, you have a gift. You have always been so good about living in the present and enjoying life.”

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Things I saw at home.

Again from KK’s list of Scintillating Sentences. It was shocking, painful, and scary to watch the way some healthcare workers treated my parents and other elders. I love to see elderhood revered and cherished, while I know some older people still need to earn the status of mature elder. No matter our age, we deserve vital respectful healthcare, the kind that helps us stay fully alive while we are still here. Remember how being a senior in high school was cool? Let’s think about seniors in life that way, too. Seniors at living, soon-to-be graduates from the school of life. They know stuff and can teach us things. We are all at home, going home, and need help.

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I am home. at the piscina, near the handstand.

“Sometimes you have to flip things around,” this reader said when I told him I loved the handstand in the background of this shot.

I love hearing from readers who are reading near water, in the water, in between swims, doing and watching handstands. It fits the book so well.

“I just finished your I am home.,” he wrote earlier, “which I started last night in bed after years of ‘not’ reading books. It demands a lot of bravery to expose your soul this way! I liked your ‘not mentioning’ any names in this book so the focus is elsewhere. I am really astonished at what a great writer and storyteller you are! I will now surely go for your first, Lucy, go see…”

(see p.108 in the book to understand the full context of the nots in these comments)

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I am home. in great hands.

Montse “…loved the storyline, the way it was written and presented. Very easy to read, and you are hooked from the very first page!

Marianne’s writing is simply yummy, and extremely entertaining.

I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it and would highly recommend it to everyone.

I am home. is a must-read.”

Scintillating Sentences

“Scintillating Sentences” is what one reader calls the three-page list of sentences she underlined as she read, and then sent to me. Rather than posting them all at once, I think I will share them one at a time when the feeling hits. The one I have chosen for today makes me feel good and reminds me it can be a prayer. I remember the wonder of hearing myself say it out loud. And later, the realization that came after writing it, looking at it on the page, and knowing that was the first time in my life I felt that. I love revision. Re-vision. That great gift writing gives us to look at what we have to say again and to see it in new ways. This simple 14-word sentence is a prism through which to consider love, divinity, body, woman, and human. The scene in which it is uttered evokes the gratitude the narrator feels for what her body does for her, what it tells her, how it helps her. The body is active, the body is divine, the body is a messenger.

“Beyond brava!!!  So so moving in myriad meandering meaning-filled ways,” the reader wrote at the top of the list.