Posts tagged “life

Here We Are & There We Were

Posted on December 19, 2016

The last ten years have been growing up all over again, from learning how to be a partner in a marriage, to learning how to be a parent and a business partner. Talk about all-elbows and knees, and if I’m honest, stubborn chin and chips on shoulders. I never imagined how closely raising myself and raising my kids would overlap. I suppose I thought time would give me the courtesy of allowing me to figure myself out before it became time for me to stand at the edge of precipice after precipice with blue eyes on me asking, “Do you know what to do next?” The saving grace has been that for the first time in my life I’ve trusted myself. As a mom, while…

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Tiny Boosts—Finding Joy Anywhere

Posted on October 13, 2016

I read somewhere the other day that sadness is a part of the privilege of joy, it literally allows space for joy to breathe. That makes a lot of sense to me, maybe in part because I was raised to believe that sometimes you just need a really good cry. I remember letting myself go and falling into a pillow and unlocking the tears and worries of my younger self. I would cry until the pillow case was so wet I needed to flip it. Sometimes I’d throw in loud cleansing sobs.  As an adult I don’t do it quite as much, but I am trying to allow myself to get back to the practice of living unclenched. The years we spend unafraid of our…

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Let’s Do This #ImWithHer

Posted on October 8, 2016

I remember in high school I had two really close friends and a third who occasionally joined us in our shenanigans. The two I spent the most time with, Kristie and Rebecca, were both shorter than me. They also tended not to get as worked up about things as I did. I always felt kind of clunky and out of control by comparison. When there would be misunderstandings between us they would talk in back channels and often use our other friend as a way of talking with me. This of course only made me more frustrated. I look back on those years, awkward and tumultuous as they were, with great affection. These girls still cared for me in spite of how fiery I lived,…

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Can I Talk to You?

Posted on September 12, 2016

We try hard to not mess up as parents, setting out with the best of intentions. The thing is we didn’t plan for the transitions and the way it all changes, as it should, after the switch from crawling to walking, preschool to backpacks and homework. The matrix gets simpler and infinitely more complicated at once. It’s easy to miss an invitation to talk or a cry for help, like blink and you miss it easy. I’m not sure I’m getting any better at being ready for the quiet, “Mom, can we talk” questions. Between the very real effect of stress on my body and the equally real threat that they’ll stop turning to me, I have to figure out a way. I found a quote early one morning…

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Results Are In: Benign Myxoma

Posted on August 31, 2016

My friend Heather came to visit Monday. She used to live in Albany and we’d get together periodically to catch up—sometimes to rant about things, other times to say things like, “My store is closing” or “Like, I don’t have a f*cking job.” I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to have people you don’t have to shine for, you can be scared and angry, they don’t care. In the case of Heather, she left Albany to go to Philadelphia to work for the DNC, so the stories were excellent.   Heather came because I was scared and she has without fail, reached out to me in times when I’ve been low and texted, “You want me to come up?” When she arrived…

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