Just Write {150}

August 26, 2014

It was a stifling kind of humid this weekend and then just like that, it lifted. That’s Minnesota. It’s a “just like that” kind of place. This morning it’s so chilly I’m glad I closed the windows last night. I sit here now with slippers on. The air around me smacks of autumn, and so do all the back to school Facebook posts of yesterday. We still have this one week before the call of the fall schedule. This one week, to shift gears, let go, and start again. Sometimes people say, We’re ready! and I think they mean they have all their school supplies and the clothes that fit the season and the growing children. If they mean they are mentally and emotionally prepared, they need to be teaching the rest of us. I haven’t met a mother (or any guardian of a child’s life and heart) that feels ready for such […]

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Just Write {149}

August 19, 2014

They were wiped out, and so was their mother (that’s me!) but we were keepin’ on keepin’ on. That’s how we roll. And it is in the midst of all of the busy-ness and ugh and whining and arguing and trying and failing and keepin’ on, that we find the most moments of joy. No, not in the times when we try to make it arise, like planning a special trip or event. I mean, that’s fun too, but joy seems to prefer the daily grind and sometimes it is hiding behind the ordinary and can only be found if you keep going around the next bend. For us it was popping up in the middle of this: I came home from work. I had been at the Middle Fork Cafe, with the entire place full and just one me, until serving help came. Phew. The kids had a sitter and had so […]

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just take a moment…for Ferguson

August 15, 2014

Honestly, once again, I knew too little. Breaking news is something I don’t have connection to these days, honestly. I am in a little starting-over-mothering-working-three-jobs bubble. I am blocking out the world a lot, which can be really good, but remember, the best way to overcome your stress and pain is to change the freaking topic from self to others. So. Ferguson. I am caught up now. And these here posts (below) by friends of mine say what needs to be said most. Please take time to openly receive these perspectives and learn from them. I feel the heart of a graceful humanity in these words. I do not feel the sometimes defensive and ignorant responses that are rooted in just not getting it. Please read these: Sarah Bessey – In which I have a few things to say about Ferguson Preston Yancey – When this is about Ferguson Ann Imig – My […]

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Robin Williams, Matt Walsh, Joy and Silence

August 13, 2014

Don’t worry, I won’t pretend to be an expert on depression or any mental illness or addiction for that matter. I could try to do that, telling you I have a degree in Psychology and ten years experience working professionally with people struggling with mental illness. I could tell you that I have struggled myself, with both depression and addiction and I am sober and I’m better. That I know how it feels. I could tell you how many people I’ve known who have taken their own lives. In a way, I guess I’m telling you all of that. But none of it matters, so let’s not focus on it. Nothing makes any person an expert on another person’s pain, mental health, life, or death. And yet there sure are a lot of self-proclaimed experts out there, especially on the Internet. And lately I’ve been so immersed in life that I am very […]

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