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From a very small age, we get the notion that things need to be done a certain way, or else. We make up our own logic and rules about the way we need to do our lives with this impending threat looming that if we don’t do it that way, there’ll be consequences. I had…
Summer 2018 is rolling out in a leisurely fashion. It started out at a run when we went straight to the beach the weekend after school let out. But that ended up being a great thing for all of us to be put into the official Summer mode. I’ve allowed myself to sleep or lay…
We all mean well as parents. Well most of us. We mess up trying to overcompensate for the advantages we didn’t have as children. We spoil them and we coddle them when all they really need is our undivided attention and our faith in them. But the one thing many of us seem to overlook…
All-consuming, persistent, relentless, and unforgiving. Motherhood is 365 days per year of these and many more words, flattering and not. One day to recognize all of this feels cheesy. But then Christmas feels all too short to celebrate our oneness with Gratitude and salvation. We’ll be celebrating more Mother’s day next weekend as my husband…
When you don’t feel you are worth it, like the effort to go to the doctor or make those changes to your diet or get more education for a better paying job, why and who you are making the effort for may be your key to motivation. You don’t value yourself enough for the effort?…
When my son was little, if I saw he was doing something that would hurt himself intentionally, I’d say, “Don’t hurt my friend”. I say this to my daughter as well. The idea is that I care about them as much as I would a friend seems to be not as obligatory but a choice…
My daughter is just starting elementary school now in Pre-K. I am again besieged by notifications and permission slips galore just like back when Eamon was in Kindergarten and there was “homework”. See my recent repost of my piece Kindergarten Homework here. All sorts of good intentions being bantered back and forth between educator and…
As parents, we have a lot of damage control to manage. We expect that our children will be teased so we try to give them un-teasable names. We imagine they’ll be injured by the coffee table so we choose to have a round coffee table. We see the food struggle coming and so we make…
You may not choose to run a marathon for yourself but you would for a cause you felt truly moved by. It feels the same way with self-recovery, the process of rediscovery of our truest strongest selves. It is such a struggle through forests of fear and sorting of fact from fiction that a person would…
I really have no expertise when it comes to happy endings. Miserable endings I could script out perfectly for you though. So when it was suddenly clear to me as a new parent that I was responsible for shading the outlook of the world for my children. When interpreting what they see in movies or…
