Love
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moreWhy Mother’s Day is for the Birds
On Friday, May 10 th, 2013Because I ain’t no Hallmark mother – and none of us are, if we’re really truth-telling here. If we’re honest– and what else is there really — there were burnt dinners and yelling mornings and neck strained words over lost shoes and scattered Legos and unfinished homework and there were cru...
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moreThe One Song No Woman can Afford to Miss
On Tuesday, April 23 rd, 2013I heard of a woman once, who when she was with child, she turned and this song swelled in her, her child’s own song, and she would hum it as she washed pots. Hum it as she did her hair up, hum that song like a beckoning. And when that woman swayed at the end of her ripening, just before the child came, she had hummed it low between each tightening, how she had hummed that...
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moreHow to Live Through the Messy
On Wednesday, April 03 rd, 2013This? This is *right* where we are at this week: She asks me how it’s going. And I have to smile. And I tell her that there are pots on the stove and crumbs on the counters and yes, wherever we are, there’s always so much good and there are always hard things. ...
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moreThe 1 Command that Could Resurrect the Church, Our Hurting Places & the Sisterhood of Women
On Wednesday, March 13 th, 2013There’s a reason He called us His Body and not His Estate.” That’s what Tib Pearson told me. Tib with his Red Wing workboots and worn John Deere hat and hands weathered and etched like a greying cedar rail. “A Body is connected with sinew and vein — and an estate is divided with fences and line.” He said it with his hands, the way a man of the land...
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moreDispatch from a Near Drowning, and A Love Note to Self-Loathers
On Thursday, March 07 th, 2013Today, an author, friend, another mama of 6, living not off land, but sea, a woman of deep wisdom and whom I hold in the highest esteem — Leslie Leyland Fields, with a dispatch from Alaska: I was swept off my feet a few days ago. By the massive cold hand of a wave—an ocean wave twice as big as its brothers. I was there on the beach beside my house with camera in hand be...
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moreWhen You Need The Very Best Valentine
On Thursday, February 14 th, 2013To the one who takes me anyway: I know that it really might not have been. That I could have laughed too loud — wait. I did laugh too loud — but the craziest thing was that you didn’t roll your eyes but looked into mine instead. I’ve got no bloomin’ reason why. Why did you find my eyes and look straight and unasham...
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more5 Things You Need to Know Before You Begin Your 2nd Term of Life
On Monday, January 21 st, 2013It felt like the second term to her. Her 39 and him about 40, and the first half over, now the beginning of the second. Or of the end — depending how you looked at it. You don’t get to make up most of your story. That’s what she thought at the stove over eggs, over all the cracked and broken things. ...
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more3 Marriage Habits Every Marriage Needs– because it’s worth falling in love again
On Wednesday, January 09 th, 2013He lays his hand on my shoulder. Water drips from strands tousled and a rivulet runs down the small of my back. “I have no idea what to wear.” I’m paying him no mind, standing before the closet with my towel, mumbling words. Hangers clatter. “What you’re wearing is rather pre...
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moreThe Truth about Really Having it All
On Friday, September 21 st, 2012I t was after the waves. After the waves of contractions, after the waves of blow out diapers and wet nursing pads that leaked through the let downs and the damp spit blankets that piled high at the bedroom door. Long after the waves of colic at 3 am and the 4:30 am crying, both the swaddl...
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morewhat it means to have the miracle of a sister
On Tuesday, September 18 th, 2012Sisters make circles of time, a completing of sentences and memories and laughter, the past curving into now and you both know how it all rolls. A sister born friend, she turns all the inner worlds that won’t fit into words, into a deep knowing. From the moment I first cupped a woman child into me, I had always wanted this for her — a sister to round out her heart. ...
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moreWhat Women Need to Say to Each Other… because it’s what every woman needs to hear
On Friday, September 14 th, 2012IIt’s when you came up behind me and put your arms around me in the kitchen last night while I was making food for your Dad. The way you laid your head on my shoulder and you held me, mama in the daughter arms after all these thirteen years. I reached up and laid my hand on your cheek, and it only takes a moment and mother and a daughter aren’t far apart anymore. Yo...
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more10 Ways to be a Happier Mom
On Wednesday, August 15 th, 201210 Ways to be a Happier Mom 1. Life is not an emergency. Life’s a gift. Just. Slow. Down. 2. Now is not a...
