What makes a home is very simple: love and safety. Safety to be your whole self and to say anything, while knowing without a shadow of a doubt that you will always be unconditionally loved by the people there. It’s true when you’re 5 and when you’re 75. Home can be a house, apartment, tent,…
What Spills Out
For every awful thing I can name that's upset our world, there are at least a dozen related things for which to be thankful. For every negative way our lives have been impacted, at least a dozen positives or silver linings. For every mean girl, at least a dozen kind girls. For every disappointment, at…
Compass or Baggage
Love is never ever ever selfish. Love is never present when there are excuses or narratives or explanations. Love does not coexist with those things. Love is black and white in terms of its presence. It's either evident or it is absent. If a person's behavior is selfish, the only love involved is the individual's…
Freedom
One of the unexpected interesting things about WordPress is the analytics. The countries site visitors are from, and then being able to find and communicate with other people with similar writing styles and interests. These pages are part of my journal and I never thought analytics would be of any importance to me. And yet…
Closet Space
One of the best experiences in the days when your house becomes just yours is that moment when you realize that the closet belongs wholly to you. No sharing. No things hanging haphazardly and with no real organization. Tie racks become scarf organizers. Purses and shoes reside just above their corresponding clothes. The closet is…
One Corner Piece
Regret and Accountable. These two words have been running around in my head for months. Some days they are louder than others, but their noise is an almost constant hum in the background of my life. I didn't behave inappropriately with someone else, I didn't and don't hide from all the people who might…
What is Love, Actually?
This is easy: it's something about Hugh Grant. Just kidding. I don't really think it's Hugh Grant, but at the same time I'm not sure I have the ability to help children understand the answer to that question - at least as it relates to big people being in true love. It's a subject I’ve…
Alice in Wonderland
My first glimpse of truth was at a costume party. He took me to her house for the event, and the two of them enjoyed shots with neighbors and work pals while her husband and I watched them like they were our errant children, laughing about how they couldn’t hold their liquor and wouldn’t make…
Find the Funny, Brave Girls
Find the funny in all things, and life will be fun. I don’t know where I heard that in my youth, but it has stuck with me. I really really wish I could remember the context, but it is deeply hidden somewhere in my mid-forties Mom brain which must prioritize school lunch components that need…
Grieving is Brave
It’s hard to predict what things will “stick” in our children’s minds years from now. What memories will become indelibly lodged in their brains and psyches. What events will be life changing. What words will be mulled over repeatedly. What action or inaction will never be forgotten, and will alter the way they think and…
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