About the Author

“If I’d had different experiences, I’d have different things to say.” Mark Nepo

Hi. I’m Linda, formerly a God-fearing, baton-twirling, stalwart virgin who grew up in Southern California in the 50’s when Republicans, Walt Disney and fear of Communism were larger than life.

At the age of six, I played hide-and-seek. At nine, I played an accordion. At 10, I played Clue. At 12, I learned the “facts of life” and concluded that sex was only possible if the woman stood on her head. At 16, my best friend told me it was easier than that. At 17, I entered the convent and at 18 I left. At 20, I married a man I had never French kissed and by 31 I had four children under the age of 9. By the time I turned 32, I was a subtly seething avenger of all my experience and inexperience and irrationally intent on discovering and exposing who was to blame.

Early in this expedition, I concluded that I had been neither directly involved in nor morally responsible for the events or outcomes of my life – just undeservedly forced to endure their consequences. I had been an observer of events but not a participant, a hapless bystander, a timid tourist inadvertently caught in the crossfire from rival neighborhoods. Clinging to this belief like a personal life preserver, I rejected the demeaning dictates of organized religion, hunted down and devoured ideas and people I’d never known existed, and began way too many sentences with the words “How dare you!”

More recently, armed with the bespoke wisdom rage and age provide, I began curating the re-recollections, rude awakenings and rabid rants that document my decades-long pilgrimage from avenger to absolver. I invite you to revel in them, renounce them, recognize someone you know in them, and maybe share a few of your own.

Finally, apologies to family members and friends who may be horrified by what they read here. I leave it to them, and to you, to figure out if what I say is the result of my experiences, a guilty conscience, residual rancor or a chronic neurodegenerative disease named after an obscure German psychiatrist.