cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Stretching my legs in the gas station parking lot somewhere along I-70 East, I had never felt so lost in my entire life. Not lost in terms of directions. Lost on a deeper level. Age 24 and along for the ride as my parents headed to a week on the Atlantic Ocean with both of…
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Over a decade ago, my mother, Tracy, welcomed you to a tiny corner of the internet that was slowly unfolding as Red Tent Living. The website was always intended to be a place where women could come and connect in the middle of our messy and hard ordinary. Red Tent Living wasn’t about perfectly curated…
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I take a tight sip of my Eagle Rare before setting it back on the bar to turn and face my mother. With her hand gently grasping her own pour, we share a knowing glance. I am allowing myself to feel the full range of emotions that marriage can carry, and I am breathing in the…
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I was 26 when my then fiancé called off our wedding five days prior to the big day. In the immediate aftermath, my thoughts were a numbed haze, disbelief serving as a kind of thick bubble wrap that initially insulated me from the pain I would befriend in coming months.
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I’d booked a room of my own for a week at a lodge on the outskirts of Cosby, Tennessee—a town too sleepy to care if you call it the middle of nowhere. Set just off a creek where horses grazed freely on miles of green meadow, the lodge I’d chosen had a wraparound deck, a…
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There’s a voice in my head that assesses how I perform in the realm of conflict—a land often riddled with regrets, betrayals, and loss. I can always count on the voice to determine how things should have gone in any situation. To highlight the choices she would have made instead of the ones that I made.…
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Mom leaned her head out from the balcony of the InterContinental Paris Le Grand. “You can practically hear the joy out in the streets!” she exclaimed. She was right, of course. Paris is always bright, but at Christmas time, it twinkles, and all of the cars, pedestrians, and little shops seem to twinkle with it.…
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Forever love is a steady kind of change. That’s what I think as I peer over top of the forest in our backyard and see the sun rising in precisely the same way as a year ago—bright and joyous. Already, the leaves are bright shades of orange, cardinal, maroon, and goldenrod. With a series of…
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Right before the clock marked the start of theology class each day, Dr. Todd Billings would arrive in a rush: a massive stack of reference articles tucked beneath his arm, a legal pad filled with scribbles in his hand, and the quirkiest of laughs ready to sound in delight at his students. Under Dr. Billings’…
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I was 17 years old and headed into my senior year of high school when my youngest sister was born. I remember feeling excited for Elly to come. But I also spent a lot of Elly’s first year of life worried. I worried that she and my sister Libby (who at that time was only…
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