Tag: life
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The Great Unfurling of Growing Up
Eight years. Eight years since I crossed the holy threshold of birth to become a mother. Dreams brought to life with the great ache of joy; quivering, squeezing, stretching until I emerged as something wholly new, holding someone holy and new. And now, through the creeping crawl of the days and the great strides of…
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What it Means to Live a Creative Life
For the longest time, I didn’t consider myself a creative person. Though I loved to explore the world and my mind with curiosity, follow inspiration, and make new and different things, it never felt like enough. Unless I had published a book or released a song or had art displayed in a gallery or poetry…
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Love Affairs
I’m a romantic in my soul. Led by eyes of wonder and a heart that changes with the tides of emotion, I can easily find myself falling, falling. Spiraling into an unanticipated love affair. I’ve only ever loved one man, and I’m lucky enough to have married him. But places. The new and different and…
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Ten Reasons To Travel Solo With Kids
More than two weeks have passed since our van pulled into the driveway, the kids excitedly jumping out and scrambling to find their long-lost favorite toys. The days that have gone by since then have been a blur of unpacking and laundry, restocking the house with necessities, breaking up sibling squabbles when our house full…
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Love and Loss
This morning, as I was baking a cake and doling out spoonfuls of batter to eager little mouths and orchestrating a silly celebration for my younger daughter’s half-birthday, millions of other women were marking this day with much less joyous memories. October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, and the entire month of…
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Taking Note from Nature
‘Tis the season for hustle and bustle, for stress and excess. Meanwhile, the natural world quiets, slows down, and turns inward. Meanwhile, bears and bugs hibernate, leaves fall from trees in a not-so-subtle suggestion to let go of that which no longer serves. Meanwhile, our busy bodies fight against their own natural urges. There are…
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My Darlings, I Delight in You
My Darlings, I hope you know, deep in your heart, how much I delight in you. I hope you see it. I hope you see past my tired eyes and my distracted mind. I hope you see the love and pride and joy that resides within those weary eyes. I hope you see how they…
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The Last Summer Days
This week has started to feel like fall here in our neck of the woods, with cool mornings that call for a sweatshirt alongside a warm cup of coffee and the sweet song of crickets singing us to sleep at night. Officially the season will shift in a couple days. As leaves begin to cascade…
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A Love Like That
What is it that makes marriage work? What makes love last? There are probably a million different answers to these questions. Depending on the marriage, depending on the love. But the only marriage I know is mine, the only love my husband’s. So in the weeks leading up to this day, our sixth anniversary, the…
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Home Grown
My younger daughter’s chubby baby fingers dug in the rich, dark soil as my older daughter’s tiny toes balanced carefully on the wooden beam that extended across our small raised garden bed. I sat watching, anxiously, as they crawled and danced and wove between delicate climbing tendrils of a cucumber plant, wide, overpowering leaves of…
The Small Wanders 