because words are powerful
Melancholia. The Blues. Grief. Whatever you called it, I’m feeling it today. I dozed through the early hour I’m usually up before I start my day. The time that I’m usually writing. For the fourth morning in a row. I have carried a heaviness in my chest I know as The Need to Cry. It…
I’ve been thinking about expectations a lot lately. What can I reasonably expect from someone I love? What can I reasonably expect from myself in grief? What can I expect from my creative outlets when I work full time and have jam-packed weekends for the past few weeks? I expected more from myself in the…
“Even in your despair, you are magnificent.”-Truth Bomb by Danielle LaPorte I am finding the magnificence of my ability to cope in a prolonged season of despair. I find myself disconnected from my partner because of circumstances that are outside (mostly) of our control. I feel the weight of my daughter’s grief over her father’s…
Tonight I added another event to the list of presidential biography experiences. I sat in the chapel on the campus where I work and listened to Doris Kearns Goodwin discuss her experiences as a presidential historian. She is a great storyteller and had such interesting and firsthand experiences working in the Johnson Administration and later…
I am home from the weekend away. In the warm embrace of my faith community and friends I have known for decades, I exhaled, smiled, shed tears, and soaked up the spirit, which renewed me. Weekend trips away help me vacate the details of regular life that often overwhelm and weigh me down. The problems…
Part of the draw of attending this out-of-town event hosted by my faith community is the friends and familiar faces I will see in the next two days. Susan and I catch each other’s eye, and she comes my way. We went to college together eons ago and have grown closer in the years since….
I was telling my friend my latest homeowner snafu and asked her for her trouble shooting ideas. As we talked, I had an epiphany. What seems particularly difficult about this stage of life is the lack of handy people I have accessible. I grew up with a handy dad, two handy grandpas, and a handy…
If you could send a message to the entire world, what would you say in 30 seconds? How we do the little things is how we do the big things. This goes for child-rearing, banking, pizza-making, everything! The fine motor skill of doing something small well builds the muscle and capacity to grow our ability…
I sat on my second to last monthly call for a ministerial team I have participated in for nearly eight years. This time last year I announced that 2026 would be my last year. In those eight years, I have expanded my comfort zone and taken on volunteer responsibilities that I couldn’t have imagined before….
As our two cars approached my daughter’s exit home, I started waving from my car. She flashed her headlights at me in return. My heart dropped as I drove in silence away from my only child. She is numerically a novice adult at 19 but is carrying the responsibilities of someone three times her age….
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