Hand Wash Cold with Karen Maezen Miller

If every Tuesday afternoon you wheeled your garbage cans out to the curb and saw your next-door neighbor doing the very same thing, your neighbor would be Karen Maezen Miller. It’s easy to think that meaning, fulfillment, and bliss are “out there,” somewhere outside of our daily routine. But in this playful yet profound reflection on awareness, the compelling voice of a self-described errant wife and delinquent mother reveals the happiness at the bottom of the laundry basket, the love in the kitchen sink, and the peace possible in one’s own backyard. Readers follow the author through youthful ambition and self-absorption, beyond a broken marriage, and into the steady calm of a so-called ordinary life. Household chores and caregiving tasks become opportunities for self-examination, lessons in relationship, and liberating moments of selflessness. Miller shows that with attention, it’s the little things — even the unexpected, unpleasant, and unwanted things — that count. Find out more at KarenMaezenMiller.com.