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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
A New Roll-Out for ‘Wrestling with God’ — Just in Time for the Holidays
Big news! Today is the day. It’s a new roll-out for my prizewinning book “Wrestling with God.” Join the celebration. Buy a copy or two! 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
I’m Not Going to Rant About the Election Results. Here’s Why
I’m not going to rant about the election results. The world doesn’t need another angry argument. I’m going to write about my garden. Or try to. Read more.
Widowed: Some Thoughts Before Election Day — From Jon
Thoughts before election day: My husband’s 2010 opinion piece on the Pledge of Allegiance assumed a social trust that’s since gone missing in America. Read more.
DON’T MISS!
My Husband Is Gone. But the Tree Trimmers Showed Up as Promised.
My husband is gone. Does that mean I have to cancel the household projects we planned and dreamed of doing? Read more.
Photo Op: Yosemite Rocks — And Sometimes It Rolls
The big rocks and cliffs at Yosemite are spectacular, but so is the smaller stuff — the boulders, rocks, stones and pebbles that litter every inch of the 12,000-square-mile national park. I’m especially partial to the glacial erratics.
A Cry in the Night — ‘Mommy, I’m Scared’
The baby books assert that American babies and children are ready to sleep through till morning and grant their parents an undisturbed night’s sleep by the time they are a year or so old. Not so in our household. A story from the Mommy Years. Read more.