Echols: A friendship 84 years in the making
“In a world where loneliness is an epidemic, I wondered what could possibly go into cultivating a friendship like this one.”
Candace Echols
Candace Echols is a Midtown resident, wife, and mother of five. A regular contributor to The Daily Memphian, she is a freelance writer who also recently published her first book, the children’s book “Josephine and the Quarantine.”
There are 136 articles by Candace Echols :
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January 2026
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Opinion Echols: ‘Much like a middle child, Gen X can feel overlooked or unseen’
“We are referred to as ‘The Forgotten Generation.’ Which could sound depressing, unless you have learned to live out of the clever quiet of a middle-child identity.”
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December 2025
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Guest ColumnistsEchols: Love languages, grace and gift cards
“Being filled to the measure of the fullness of God is better than any gift card out there. It exceeds what our carefully curated lists can bring. And it beats the biggest surprise that could ever be wrapped in a box.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: ‘It’s weird when your kids know things you don’t’
“We can take ten thousand steps, but that last one — the moment when the wick claims the flame as its own — is always something of a tiny mystery.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: Thinking about what’s behind our thinking
“Once you take a thought captive and lock it up tight, you must replace it with another thought. Very few of us are able to sit quietly with nothing at all going on up top.”
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November 2025
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Guest Columnists Echols: ‘Discovering what we are called to be’
“How can I do this life well? What is it that you can pass on to me so that I will not have to relearn the same lessons at the expense of my own heart, mind, body and relationships?”
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Opinion Echols: The things that never touch your conscious mind
“Once you start to see his handiwork in the details, you notice it everyday. And if you’re like me, you find yourself wondering how many other things you see everyday ... that never touch the conscious mind.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: How well do you know Memphis? Here’s a photo quiz to test your knowledge.
Can you name the neighborhood in which these places are found? The street? How many of these spots make you think of some other memory?
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October 2025
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Guest Columnists Echols: What word does God use for you and me?
“What we name each other, both on legal documents and in earned fellowship, is enough to determine some amount of lifelong meaning. But the grace-filled name God gives to us, both in secret and in stone, will be who we are for the rest of eternity.”
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Guest ColumnistsEchols: ‘Walking in Memphis’ isn’t what it once was
Candace Echols says she walks the line between “a willingness to satisfy my human craving for a good run” and “a consent to be on high alert.”
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September 2025
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Guest ColumnistsEchols: Fall is hard to beat
Autumn officially started Sept. 22, but one day soon, we will all wake up to air that is so crisp and so clear that it blows all the way through our souls.
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Guest Columnists Echols: ‘We need the wisdom of trees’
“We need the wisdom that shows us how to turn our faces toward the light and bend without breaking.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: Staying quiet — despite the good things we’ve found
“Let me say, ain’t nobody going to like this comparison – not the shot people, not the Christian people, and not the other people, either — but it’s real. There are things about Tirzepatide that remind me of the Holy Spirit.”
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August 2025
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Guest Columnists Echols: Words that aren’t the uninhabited talk of AI
“While AI can talk about God, it cannot speak about experiencing him. It can offer no first-person perspective on what God is like in the euphoria of love or in the depths of grief.”
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May 2025
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Guest Columnists Echols: ‘Now I’ve been taught to see’
“Living this way has flung the doors wide for me to write about things like the Grammys and National Parks and PGA golf and missionaries. ... And it’s all largely because I’ve now been taught to see.”
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Memphis GrizzliesMama Bears: Jay Huff’s mom Kathy is ‘Huff Stuff,’ too
The years Kathy Huff and her husband spent cultivating an atmosphere of reading, relationships and recreation have come to fruition now that their children, including Memphis Grizzlies player Jay Huff, are grown.
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OpinionMama Bears: On Jaylen Wells’ journey to NBA, his mother has cheered him on
“He doesn’t care about the glitz and glam of all of this stuff,” Laketia Wells said about her son. “He just lives.”
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OpinionMama Bears: Cam Spencer’s mom hopes her son’s NBA road is a long one
Cam Spencer’s grandfather was known for saying, “Enjoy the journey,” encouraging the people he loved not to focus so hard on the destination they miss the fun of the road that gets them there.
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Guest Columnists Echols: This life we’re all living — it’s weird
“Life comes at us utterly unannounced. No spoiler alerts. No accurate forecasts. No fortune tellers. It’s just us and time. And for me, God.”
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April 2025
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Guest Columnists Echols: On Easter, ‘isn’t life and flourishing what we’re after?’
“Every spring, when daffodils push up through the dirt and new leaves sprout on the trees, the earth re-tells this old story. It’s the same story, over and over and over again.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: Wrestling with the ‘swirling nervousness’
“Thankfully, the angst gave way. The swirl quieted to a calm and left no indication that it had ever existed. If I weren’t so thankful, I’d be mad — mad that I can’t look back and identify a single silver bullet or a proven magic pill.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: ‘Home Lore’ from 1928 to 2025
“Imagining a Memphis supplied with a well-informed coffeeman, uninterrupted conversation and Sunday afternoon car rides isn’t so bad.”
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March 2025
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Guest Columnists Echols: ‘I always feel so sorry for LeBron’
“Someday what we are after in the face of LeBron will be found in the face of God.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: Top 5 childhood experiences my kids know nothing about
“I’m fully aware that we didn’t have it all right back then. But today, I lament the passing of the past by submitting this list of Top 5 Everyday Experiences from My Childhood That My Kids Know Nothing About.”
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Guest Columnists Echols: However scandalous our sin, the love of Christ goes even deeper
“I honestly don’t spend much time thinking about the lives of prostitutes, but during my kids’ bedtime story last week, the topic came up.”
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