Be Strong Right Now

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.…

Girl at Work

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…

Fear and Wrinkles

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…

Unpopular

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…

Keeping Myself Honest

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…

Promise

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…

America the Great

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 All Of Us, Too

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…

Tough Talks

Feast or famine. We’re all getting along gloriously, or annoyed and arguing all day. We find three pairs of shoes we want, or zero pairs of shoes that will be the needed match. The kitchen is full of desserts and we overeat, or we hate everything we see in the pantry. Tough conversations also seem…

You’re Way Too Old For This

Supposedly, it happens to the best of us. The words that made us roll our eyes when we were 12 come out of us, directed at the next generation of children…who inwardly roll their eyes at us. You’re way too old for this I recently said. And almost immediately thought ugh, I hated hearing that.…