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Why don’t we take a walk?

Posted on June 14, 2018

The other day I heard a ping on my phone. Sean had texted me a photo of Finley and me from a wedding. I immediately remembered the moment, she’d been invited to be a flower girl, but in the church, she was overwhelmed by the enormity of the event. I don’t mean by the people or even the grandeur of the church, it was her dawning that this was a significant life event. I held her in my arms and told her how much the bride loved her and how good she would do walking with the flowers. She kept saying, “I’m just a little afraid.” Since then I have carved out times to hold her when she isn’t scared and ways to be…

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Categories: Love

Writing For Good and For Myself

Posted on May 23, 2018

On Writing My writing, like many others things, gets wedged between parenting, working, and trying not to neglect my marriage. It takes a backseat to fretting, battling pet hair, and unsubscribing from email lists. Writing is and has always been, the activity that takes me to my best place. I wish I could understand why it is so routine to postpone what I know I need. When I write I become more than I am, stretching how I think and how I love, leaving me with what I can only describe as increased power. It can be like hand-to-hand combat as my fingers move across the keyboard and my mind halts them. I’ve gotten better at fighting my weaker self, overcoming doubt and climbing…

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Categories: Me

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I Never Wanted #MeToo But We Need It

Posted on May 9, 2018

I walked toward the office and tried to make sense of my emotions. I was able to smirk at the irony of the “Cosby Found Guilty” alert coming as I made my way across a parking lot where I feel unsafe. There is always a man smoking outside who leers at me, slowly taking in every inch of my body. It is an uncontested fact that my body is a visual buffet for men to sample on the street. When I say my body, I mean it for all women, we are involuntary dishes at a feast of insatiable appetites. It doesn’t matter what we wear. It doesn’t matter the time of day. The truth is sometimes it doesn’t bother me. I feel the…

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Categories: Roar

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Time Breaks & Starts Over

Posted on April 18, 2018

“Promise we’ll have another fort at the next house?” the girls asked. It was 2010 and we were moving to fit our growing family. Two years before we’d built a play structure for them, adapting it mid-way through as, the then-toddler, Avery broke her leg and needed larger stairs. “Sure, we’ll build another one,” we said. The girls gave the fort a fond farewell and whispered that they hoped the next family would enjoy it. The new house had a deep wooded lot and we decided to build the structure into the ring of trees. It took a lot of tinkering and reconfiguring as we anchored 4x4s into pine trees. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be safe.” The girls…

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Categories: Mama Sap

Saying It Out Loud

Posted on April 7, 2018

My writing has always moved in cycles, propelled by the girls’ milestones, time’s passage, working through then and now, or by the seasons in marriage. Lately, it’s been a slow cycle, in part because the girls are getting older and where before it felt like one shared story, now it is many interlaced. Even my own story, whether about aging or marriage feels like it could intrude on the girls’ life. I come to the keyboard with a new mix of awareness, there is such power in what we share and what we reveal. I genuinely believe we each get to choose our path. I’ve been blogging for close to fifteen years, many of those years in near total anonymity. I’ve watched people I know…

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Categories: Random