cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
I hunched down in my uncomfortable bucket seat on Chicago’s commuter train heading to the suburbs. Unfortunately, I’d picked one of the few actually facing other passengers. Tears sliding down my face, I was embarrassed, so I tried to make myself even smaller, hiding in layers of winter clothing. A young woman next to me…
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In the wilds of motherhood, professional work, and various other creative endeavors, as an Indigenous/Mexican/Spanish/German woman, I find the spaces shrinking in which I feel intuitively understood. In the ongoing pandemic integration into real-life realities, paired with friction-filled sociopolitical conversations and an ever-emerging mental health crisis, I often “turtle,” or go inward. A few weeks…
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“For the opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing. This is the goal of the practice of humility. That having a “light grasp” on life prepares the way for cherishing what is right in front of us.” ― Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, Gregory Boyle Dear Colleague, This year,…
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When the pandemic hit, my business partner and I sprang into action. We felt called to serve and hold open space so that people could gather to be seen, to learn, and to process what was happening so quickly. The disruption, chaos and loss felt like a wildfire spreading faster than any of us could…
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Lottie Hillard wrote an article called “The Shame of Needing” that could have been written about me. Fifteen years ago when I was in graduate school for counseling, I recall one of the advisors saying that my shame was gregarious. I carried an air of confidence, moving in relationships with classmates and clients with charm and…
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My five-year-old fingers pulled the red crayon from the box. I placed it in the middle of the paper, made a curving line upward and around to a diagonal line downward. I came back to the dot in the center and made a symmetrical figure, a picture of a perfect heart. My heart was created…
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I have a pharmacy on my nightstand. Every night, I pop a number of vitamins from four different containers. Water, vitamins, water, vitamins, water. Then there’s the orange pill bottle. It’s not a multivitamin and I can’t get it over the counter. Out of all the pills, this is the one I’ve taken the longest,…
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