cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
For many years my value and self-worth felt inextricably tied to others. I felt this inner need, this constant pull, to do and help and support and to prove, constantly prove, that I was good, and of service, and selfless; that I was not needy, but needed. I learned the art of bending and contorting…
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You can’t say I didn’t try. I’m a fighter. I’m a good soldier. Everything in my life had prepared me for this. Growing up, fighting to shine bright enough to be seen by blind parents. Gritting my way through back pain and asthma as an athlete. Delivering four babies in four years, two of them…
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Look beyond the castle cresting along the coast. Look beyond its flowered fields blooming more than most. Pull away your velvet panels, Float upon the ocean channels. You are more than you know.
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Every year I look forward to the passage from winter to spring. This year I hardly noticed it. During this year’s transition month, I was admitted to the hospital three times, each time sicker than the last. Surgery was the last option but the eventual outcome. Then ICU, then complications, and then, finally, I was…
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Standing in the living room of my parent’s house, my dad handed me his phone, showing me a picture he had taken while on vacation. The photo was of a bus billboard that read “The world needs you to be who you are.” “Isn’t that neat?!” he exclaimed with excitement. “You should write something about…
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Growing up, I loved playing “house.” I’d run around the basement pretending to be cooking, cleaning, and going on dates with my “boyfriend.” Everything in my game of adulthood was easy and lighthearted. There was rarely any conflict or hardship, which might be why his words, spoken fifteen years ago, cut me so deeply.
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Once a year I spend five glorious days at a women’s retreat in Colorado.
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It was the last day of sixth grade, one of the few grades when I actually liked my teacher.
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Around the middle of our years in graduate school at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology—steeped in self-reflection, therapy, and the rehashing of our personal stories—my girlfriends and I were learning all about the importance of self-care.
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