cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
In September 2022, a year-and-a-half after Mom’s death, I stood in the basement that housed my business, Heart Path Story Coaching, from its opening in April 2019 until now. It is where Mom confessed she should have never made me president of the family. It is where I met with my earliest clients and art…
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We set off in June from the only home our children knew. We left an international concrete jungle and arrived at a Pacific Northwest house we rented off Craigslist, sight unseen, but for the large pine trees and lime-green grass in the photos. Without knowing a soul, we enjoyed the space of a new city,…
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Upon finishing graduate school, my new husband and I were wide open to all the places we could move. We were young, and the world was our oyster. The big dream was to move to Boston so he could attend a trade school, but the job hunt for me was hitting dead-ends and we were…
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My oldest daughter was not a cuddly child in her first four years of life. She wanted her space, and we learned to give it to her. At some point, however, she’s changed her mind on all things physical touch. These days, she cannot get close enough to me, her dad, or her sister. She…
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It was my first year in med school, a place where I was navigating community and finding friendships as an adult. I was fresh off a year serving overseas, a time of tight community, centered on walking with Jesus. Like being thrown into frigid waters, entering a new, intense season of schooling was jarring. I attended the Christian…
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*Trigger warning that today’s post contains a story of sexual violence. Through very little thought or planning on my part, my work life fell into place and eventually developed into a career plan. When I was twenty, I started working in a clerical job at a federal law enforcement agency, and over the next eight…
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There is a black-and-white photo that sits in my office. The photo is of a favorite four-year-old. In it, she is outside. Even in black and white, I know the sky in the photo is brilliant blue. She is looking straight into the camera lens. Her lovely little face fills the frame, blonde strands of…
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In honor of the tenth anniversary of Red Tent Living, we are featuring a monthly legacy post written by one of our regular contributors from the past decade. Maureen Gebben was one of the original Red Tent Writers; this post originally appeared in September 2013. I’ve had a bolus of change in my life with…
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His voice is hushed when he answers the phone. “I’m in Memeem’s duck blind.” For my entire life my brother has not been known for getting up early. In fact, historically, I don’t call him before noon. Yet my brother is like most men from the small Southern Louisiana town where I grew up, and…
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Finally. After weeks of pain shooting up my spine and into my neck, I was finally getting some relief. I had been okay with makeshift back-cracking mechanisms—over my desk chair, bending over with my arms pushing against the wall until I felt a crrrriiiickkk go up my back—but that could not go on any longer.…
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