June: in like a lion and out like a lamb, just like the weather in March. Ella is at Appalachia Service Project, serving in Dickenson County. Teams like the one she’s with travel to Central Appalachia from around the U.S. to repair homes in some of the most beautiful country in our land. She will…
I don’t love the month of June. It always brings the chaotic last two weeks of school, which seems fun but really means standardized tests, World War III because of a dwindling supply of the good lunch box treats, and someone telling me at 4:46 pm that by 6 we have to be dressed and…
I struggle to be at rest when I don’t have things figured out or when I am overwhelmed. I don’t have to know the answer, but I need to at least identify the next step. What is the next right thing to do? All week, my thoughts have been disorganized and full of feelings. Sadness.…
Women’s History Month along with the launch of affinity groups at my company has me thinking about what it means to be a woman at work. The word woman is uncomfortable for me, primarily because I think it designates a grown-up and I still think of myself as a girl. In a meeting full of…
I spent the first 20 years of my adult life battling fear of one sort or another. What if this, what if that? How can this or that possibly work out? What am I going to do? Born in the seventies, my childhood fears were pretty standard for the time: dolls having secret lives as…
I find myself biting my tongue, while screaming at the top of my lungs internally, all the time. It’s just too much right now. All of America, that is - on social media, in the grocery store, in the drop-off line at elementary schools, at school board meetings, everywhere in our government, and with media…
My journal entry from January 19, 2014, was called Keeping Myself Honest. I wrote it and then shared it because I really wanted to not wimp out and I thought I might. I have been thinking about going back to church.Since Audrey was born, I've only been a couple of times - early on to…
A year ago at about this time I was mulling over what my word for 2021 would be. The word that kept coming to mind was promise, but I dismissed it over and over again. In the middle of a pandemic with virtual school, not seeing anyone in person at Christmas, and vaccine rollout looking…
In the last week I have watched two documentary series about 9/11, and the thing that sticks in my mind above all else is how much we’re capable of coming together. Of helping people, while not even thinking about differences. We can just be good humans and good neighbors. If we could just figure out…
It’s complicated. How I feel about Biden and Afghanistan and the world is complicated. Biden really screwed up. Why are we still even in a country that we invaded because we wanted Bin Laden? We got him a decade ago. No answer anyone gives me will suffice because the truth is - outside of heated…
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