cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Who am I, and which part of me is real? It happens in the flick of a switch. The war within me between the “best version” and the “far-from-the-mark” mother. It doesn’t take much for this duality to be activated as pieces of my own story are stirred up. Both have a significant impact on…
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I have always wanted to be a camper. (Not a literal camper, but one who camps!) Perhaps it was the imagination I had when friends talked about overnights with Girl Scouts that sounded so luxurious. I also loved Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and her life on the prairie seemed a lot like camping to me.…
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“There will be a procedure. They are checking out what is going on in his lungs,” she mentions one rainy April evening. My shoe heels click as we walk down the sterile, grey halls of the big city hospital. Someone makes a joke to try to ease the tension we feel in our bodies. My…
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In early 2020, while COVID and civil unrest engulfed our country, an ongoing conflict with an abusive pastor came to a climax when my husband and I were shown the door at a church we had served for over fifteen years. I was untethered, wondering what life in the world would look like in the…
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It has been 40 years since my dad died and almost 25 years since my mom breathed her last. My in-laws have been gone close to two decades. As a young woman, I was already navigating life without any hope of a living presence of my parents. During certain stages of life, this absence has…
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A nervous shudder ran through my body when I saw his name in the subject line of the email. I braced myself for some kind of ploy. I rushed to make sense of things in my mind. Was he reaching out wanting to make things right or to humbly apologize? I quickly knew the…
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“Can we take a moment and breathe a minute? I need to pause to feel what all of this means.” I spoke as I glanced at the faces of my two friends on the Zoom screen. A tear slid down my cheek while deep disappointment registered in my chest. Massive anticipation seemed to slither out of…
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In and out of my purse it goes. Here and there in my home it moves. Shiny black cover, spiral bound, carrying my “life” inside of it. As I moved into the elementary school years of my kids two decades ago, I began to tote this “August-to-August” pal. The style of an At-a-Glance weekly planner…
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“You are one of the bravest people I know,” I squeaked, as tears filled my eyes. She kept my gaze as I spoke a blessing over her cross-country journey into the unknown. Without concrete work and with very temporary housing in place, she was moving back to L.A. after a long COVID relocation. A bright…
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I was a mere 23 years old, and my wonderful future lay ahead of me as I prepared to marry the man of my dreams. He was a naval flight officer—responsible, smart, steady, driven—and a leader who pursued all the golden ideals I desired to build my exemplary life. Unaware at the time, I wanted…
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