Sarah Darer Littman's Blog, page 2

RFK Jr's extreme and dangerous ideas

I’ve suffered from depression since I was a teenager. But I wasn’t given antidepressants for it till I was in my early 30’s. In my teens I self-medicated with weed and alcohol, and in my 20’s I just powered through, even though the stress of that showed up in my body in many other ways.

It wasn’t till I was hospitalized for a suicide attempt at age 38 that I was finally diagnosed with bipolar II, and put on mood stabilizers.

Thanks for reading Type A Little Faster! Subscribe for free to receive ...

Breathing Underwater

I spent Inauguration Day underwater. Both literally and figuratively. After a brutal autumn with my father-in-law bouncing back and forth between the ER and rehab and my husband being away most of Sept and October to care for him, (sadly, Dave passed on Jan 4th), the decline and loss of our beloved Benny, aka the Writing Assistant and then the election, H and I needed this break desperately. We’d insured it up the wazoo, unsure if we’d be able to make it, but I like to think my father-in-law’s ...

Reflections

We lost my father-in-law, David Micahnik (click for obit) last week, after a difficult few years— especially the last four months, when he was bouncing back and forth between the ER and rehab, as well as dealing with Alzheimer’s. My husband spent a lot of time away from home to manage his care, which was almost a full-time job, as anyone who has had to care for a loved one while navigating our broken healthcare system knows.

Dave’s life was devoted to fencing - competing, coaching (he was the fe...

A Letter from Last Year's Me

I first wrote myself a FutureMe letter on December 31st 2012, to be delivered on 12/31/2013.

In that letter, I set myself three personal goals and three career goals. With a few exceptions, I’ve been doing the same thing every year for over a decade.

Thanks for reading Type A Little Faster! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

One shift I’ve noticed in more recent NYE letters to myself - although I still have career goals, I’m more focused on personal goals. I attribute th...

Learning to Embrace the Fallow Periods

Hi, I’m Sarah, and I’ve spent most of my life being a Type A workaholic. Partly out of to necessity as an adult, but also because growing up as the “tormented middle child” (like Jussy in Confessions of a Closet Catholic) it felt like achieving was the way to get attention and love.

That internalized message has had its pros and cons. On the plus side, it gave me a strong work ethic, helped me get good grades in school, and got me through a MBA in Finance when it wasn’t really what I wanted to d...

Good night, Sweet Prince

Farewell, Best. Dog. Ever.

If you follow me on social media at all, you’ll feel like you know my beloved Benny, aka “The Writing Assistant.” He has been by my side for all but the first of my 20 published (or soon to be published) novels.

Today he crossed the Rainbow Bridge, leaving a ginormous, Benny-shaped hole in all of our hearts.

My mother painted this portrait of Benny on my computer from a photograph I took. She added the humor of him looking up Beggin’ Strips on it.

There’s so much emot...

Living with a Senior Dog

“The Writing Assistant” joined our family in 2007, not long after my divorce was finalized and we’d moved to our new home. My daughter was in middle school, my son in high school. I’d met a wonderful man, who ten years later would become my husband, a few months before.

My son and daughter with The Writing Assistant on the day he joined our family

The Writing Assistant quickly became a beloved family member. Sure, it took him a while to become house trained, but eventually we cracked it by putti...

Thoughts on Erev Yom Kippur 5785/2024

It’s been a long, hard year. A year where as a progressive Jewish woman, I’ve felt isolated from several communities that gave me a sense of belonging and purpose.

My belief that Israel shouldn’t be building more settlements in the West Bank, that Netanyahu has long shown that he is willing to throw Diaspora Jews under the bus, particularly women, by aligning himself with the Evangelical movement as well as autocratic antisemitic populists like Viktor Orban and Donald Trump, and that the humani...

Thoughts on finishing Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing: A Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

True confessions: I’m a Patrick Radden Keefe fangirl.

I first read his New Yorker piece, “The Family that Built an Empire of Pain”, back in 2017, when I was still a columnist for CTNewsJunkie. I’d been writing a lot about education issues and the push to privatize public education - much of it in CT funded by one of the members of that family, the late Jonathan Sackler. I realized that they were using many of the same “marketing strategies” they used to in pushing for more private charter school...

COVER REVEAL: INFLUENCED

Over the last two years, you might have heard me mention or post about a mysterious co-written book.

It all started back on January 4th, 2022, when my friend Cindy L.Otis said we should write a book together. I was still finishing edits on Some Kind of Hate, but was excited by the idea of co-authoring a novel. Here’s the entry from my 5 Year Thought A Day Journal.

Thanks for reading Type A Little Faster! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Fast forward to a year later. Aft...