Author Archives: Theodora Goss

This past week, I read a blog post on Terri Windling’s blog: “Being Normal is Over-Rated.” In it, she quotes from the writer Dani Shapiro on the writing life: “I need to live by certain rules in order to protect … Continue reading →

Some time ago, I wrote a blog post called “The Lady Code.” In it, I pointed out that there is still a “lady code,” an implicit code by which we determine whether or not a woman is a lady. This … Continue reading →

When I first read this quotation from Joseph Campbell, I thought he must be wrong: “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are for the experience of being alive.” Many years ago, … Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking about the idea of a soulmate, because I’ve seen friends who are in relationships, and friends who are not in relationships but searching for romantic partners. The idea of a soulmate is central to our idea of … Continue reading →

As you may know, I teach a class on fairy tales. In my class recently, we were talking about names in fairy tales. Very few characters in fairy tales have ordinary names: they are almost never Ann or Michael. Their … Continue reading →

When I was growing up, when I was a teenager and then in my twenties, I had an image in my mind, of a woman. She was a woman I could never become, because she was so much more sophisticated … Continue reading →

If you’ve been reading this blog or following my work for a while, you know that about two years ago, I went through a period of depression. It lasted a long time, or what is a long time for me … Continue reading →