Blog - joanne tombrakos -

Twenty Years Later – What I Will Never Forget – Nor Should I

I am sitting here with a view of lower Manhattan, the place where the Twin Towers once stood and I try to imagine as I have many times since I moved across the Hudson what it must have been to stand in this spot on 9/11, that fateful day, twenty years ago. The city feels […]

How Getting on a Plane for the First Time Since the Pandemic Helped Me to Gain Perspective

There was a time when this all came easily to me, but not this time. This time I had not been on a plane in almost two years, since before the pandemic began. This time not only was I out of practice, I was skeptical. Should I even risk it? What if I was on […]

If You Want To Create Change, Start With Gratitude

Practicing gratitude came later to me in life. Not that I was raised to be ungrateful. I wasn’t. I was a fussy eater as a child – something I clearly outgrew. If I didn’t want to finish all the food on my plate at dinner – which was pretty much all the time, I was […]

I Can’t Remember What Last Mother’s Day Was Like

I can’t remember what last Mother’s Day was like. There is nothing in my journal about it. I know the lockdown was starting to wear on us all, especially so on my mother. She watched too much television, never missing the countless interruptions reporting the death toll from Covid and advice on what to do to […]

What Happens When You Decide To Make 2021 The Year Of Being Kind To You

When I made my list of intentions for 2021 I decided to include being kind to me. Not that I was being unkind to myself in 2020 but 2020 was …well …. it was 2020. Between the pandemic, watching my mother decline and then passing in October, and having a toxic administration in Washington that […]