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About Barbara
I’m Barbara Falconer Newhall and I’ve got a serious case of the human condition.
I’ve done it all: career, family, house, garden, and a prize-winning book, "Wrestling with God." The result: I'm a woman of years, lots of them, who can't help seeing things from the funny side.
Tucked away on this website are hundreds of riffs on life. I hope you’ll seek them out – and keep me company as I discover the humor, if not the meaning, in what life throws my way. Learn More
THE LATEST
Was My Mother a 1950s Tradwife?
My mother was a tradwife, a bona fide 1950s tradwife. That’s what she wanted. That’s what she got. Read more.
BARBARA’S BOOK
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read the words of this fine author and observer. Read more.
An inveterate doubter for most of her adult life, journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall embarks upon a quest to find a way to believe in God in the twenty-first century.
The result is Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith, which details her search for the Divine in the lives of diverse Americans – from a fundamentalist Christian to a progressive Muslim to a Buddhist monk.Seekers of all persuasions will feel represented here, from priests, ministers, and rabbis to engineers, physicists, and avowed non-believers . . . a riverflow of a book. — Phil Cousineau, host of PBS’s Global Spirit
Recent Riffs on Life
The Trouble With Poinsettias
The trouble with poinsettias is — they don’t know that Christmas is over and it’s time to make an exit. Read more.
Widowed: If I Visit His Grave, Will It Help?
I said hello to Jon and his family, and then there was nothing more to do in this graveyard. Read more.
DON’T MISS!
The Hagia Sophia: Where Christianity and Islam Coexist — and Clash
As an American Christian, I’d never known how it feels to have my faith’s most cherished symbols obliterated by a colonizing force. Until I entered the Hagia Sophia. Read more.
Atheist to Catholic–Two Brainy Women Get Religion
Two memoirists, both very smart, move from atheism toward God, and from there smack, dab into full-fledged Catholicism. Read more.
I Can’t Believe I Got in the Water With That 1400-Pound Whale
Last weekend I watched the CNN documentary “Blackfish” and saw a Sea World trainer attacked and pulled underwater by an out-of-control killer whale. I had to wonder — could that have been me? “Blackfish” traces the deadly history of killer whales at places like Sea World, and it brought back memories of the day I found myself in a tank of water with a 1400-pound pilot whale named Koko. Read more.