My bare feet were up on the dash. The windows were open. No radio, no iPod, no talking, no thinking….just the night sounds of Minnesota. I got to sit where I am the most at home, engulfed in those night sounds and peace. At least for a few hours, the croaking frog chorus, the birds saying good night, the crickets and the back drop of a deeply still silence that makes all the creature sounds beautiful. A few days ago, in Texas, we turned on to our street and Miles pointed out the cemetery. He said, Whenever we turn that corner, or pass another cemetery, I get this weird feeling in my stomach, I don’t know why. Yeah honey, I know what you mean. Many might think of evil, of spirits or even zombies, but I think what we feel is grief, goodbyes and all the memory stories of lives left. Yesterday […]
I am waking up before the sun these days. I start the Keurig and as it warms up, I stretch my nearly 40 year old back and pray prayers that are not contrived or from a place of over-emotional-mixed-up-ness. (Those are not bad prayers, I just need different ones right now.) Like the Lord’s Prayer, it is so comforting, that one. And the Serenity Prayer. OMG (like a prayer) I definitely need that one. The wisdom to know the difference. After the coffee is ready, I come upstairs to my office, where it’s bare except for the desk and computer (a strange but good feeling comes from this emptiness), and I write. I return a few emails. I try not to get sucked in to Facebook. The boys eventually come rushing down the hall, almost always right around 6:00. Miles says HI as he streaks past the doorway and Asher runs in, hugs […]
Their dad was on a work trip and we were eating dinner, sitting together at the round white table. I don’t know which house will have the table. These are the things I’m answering, for my children. It’s impossible that this is what I’m answering, but I am. At their ages, there is some confusion about divorce and the finality of it, and confusion on how we will have all of our things, that we have now, but split up, in two places. I don’t know if they understand that this means the end of our marriage. A marriage that was also theirs, in the way that children connect. The love stays, the parenting stays, the belonging stays…I don’t care who gets the white table. Our kids are excited that if Asher is at one house and Miles is at the other, they can still play Minecraft, in tandem. This is mind blowing […]
I’ve been binge reading again, and I love sharing books with you. Today I want to tell you about another book written by a Midwestern (MINNESOOOHTAN) woman, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew. You guys, read this book. Hannah, Delivered is about midwifery, natural childbirth and allowing your soul its own rebirth again and again, through pain. It’s about trusting the process, surrender and truth. I could howl like a mama in labor over the way I enjoyed…devoured…this book. I’m fascinated by the things of childbirth, the ways our bodies know, the ways our medical system is broken, the ways women belong to themselves and each other. There is so much to learn and that knowledge is often born (pun intended) of story. Hannah’s story is a journey through the powerful mystery of births, and the path of a woman seeking answers and redemption. Two things that so often cannot come to life, take a […]
Everyone has a different version of the same divorce story. They are each our own, true to our perspectives, filters, shoddy memories and all our emotional baggage. It’s when we’re going through the hardest things that we wish everyone outside of us could be inside. Just for a glimpse. Divorce, like childbirth, is only slightly the same for each person going through it. For the most part, it’s your very own experience. Each divorce, a snowflake…but less pretty. And maybe still as magical–sad but true. Because we will survive it and it will refine us, and there is so much peace about the decision. We are on our way to a better place, somehow. Right now we’re just drifting down. How did we get to the place we were? How did we sit there for so long? To say how it was out loud, as I do to my friends and family, is […]
Lately he has been hanging out with me, just sitting there on the couch or plopping down on the floor, flat on his back, while I hang clothes in my closet. He talks and talks and talks. Mostly about Legos or Star Wars or other things that he thinks about all the time. The other night, at bedtime, he said he couldn’t get to sleep because of his busy mind. My brain tries to focus on so many things at once, he said. It won’t stop going fast from thing to thing. Oh how I know. And how I wish I could slow it down for him, this boy with his mother’s brain. But I can’t, and maybe he’ll be a writer or think quick on his feet in his work, whatever it is. Maybe he’ll think up the greatest new thing to help people, because of his ideas, the ones that never […]
“From this one place I can’t see very far, from this one moment I’m square in the dark…” – Sara Groves I don’t know how to do this. Just quit. I don’t know how and haven’t been able to. I don’t even know how it happened. But it did. Even to me, the girl who is always fine because other people are not fine. It’s this Thing that laughed at my always trying to be good and please everyone self, and kicked my stubborn pride in the guts. It laughed. And then it kicked harder and harder. I’ve always tried to be a bit invisible. Felt a little invisible. Even while bouncing and laughing and showing off. Even then. Keep it simple. Keep it small. No one has time for your always so overly sensitive self, always so affected, so full of emotion. Just stop. Go numb. You’ll be fine. So the funny […]
It’s a short flight from Atlanta to Austin. I’m on my way home from Mom 2.0 Summit. It was held at the beautiful Ritz Carlton hotel in Buckhead. The summit is a really well done and totally-worth-it experience, and It was a lot for me. Right now is not necessarily the best time to be away, to feel so out of sorts. Traveling makes me get all out of sorts no matter how intentional I am about it all, trying to remember to just be. This morning I woke up way too early to catch a return shuttle to the airport and it was all so smooth and simple and then there I sat, two hours before boarding, at the gate, writing and slumping over a little in my seat from being so tired. All I did last night was stay in. I ate really fantastic french fries and I was writing and […]
