Author Archives: Annie Campbell

“Let your life speak” is a Quaker adage. It sounds abstract until you meet someone like my brother-in-law, Don Campbell. Don believed that God finds ways to speak to us and through us.  When one looks back at a life– … Continue reading →

This week marks a year since my breast cancer diagnosis. I’ve been quiet on this blog.  Silent.  My last post, six months ago, was celebratory and conclusive: I was done with chemo. I’d rung the bell. I knew I still … Continue reading →

Last week, I  packed my chemo bag for the last time.  I called it my carry-on.  My infusion takes the same amount of time as a transatlantic flight.  At the end of those long days, there was no crackling announcement … Continue reading →

On Sunday night I sat across the table from my husband at a restaurant with huge windows that opened onto the sidewalk.  It was a moon-drenched night — just as it was in Honolulu the night my parents got married.   … Continue reading →

The year that my sister and I got camel saddles was the Christmas we never stopped talking about.   In 1966 we lived in a fashionable suburb of Cairo.  Our villa was just a few blocks away from the vast Sahara … Continue reading →

Once I had a student from Egypt who asked me for a word in English.  He took an Arabic word I did not know and created a picture of it in my mind.  “Mrs. Campbell,” he asked, “What is it … Continue reading →

I am at the beach remembering–weaving the past into the present moment and at the same time committing the beauty of now to future memory.  We  memorize the moment and outline it with what has been. Hope realized has its … Continue reading →

I hear this year’s anthem of our collective grief over and over: “2020 sucks.” I find myself dumbly nodding and it feels like a betrayal. It isn’t that I’m blind to the suffering and losses of this year. I’m not. … Continue reading →