Before I had my first missed period, I knew my pregnancy with Turner was different. I was sick alllll day and alllll night, waking up in the midnight hours of fall in Georgia to take a nibble of a granola bar and pray for relief. I spent most of the Halloween season lying on the apartment […]
When you’re choosing a professional — doctor, dentist, accountant, lawyer — you rarely consider someone you’ve known since first grade because…well, you’ve known them since first grade. And by the time you reach 40, that’s a lot of years bearing witness to a person’s flaws and mistakes. Kathryn (from this point forward referred to as […]
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott “If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?” – Hobbes of Calvin & Hobbes Grief requires copious amounts of grace. […]
“No road is too long in the company of a good friend.” – Japanese Proverb Grief is a long, lonely road with an unknown end. Traversing it demands stamina, fortitude and resilience. Surviving it requires support, help and companionship. Inevitably, there will be times you feel fully and wholly alone. No one person can completely […]
One of the most impactful ways to improve your mental health is through reading. Reading allows us to challenge ourselves, our viewpoints, our knowledge and understanding, and our daily practices. These 5 books have been instrumental in helping me process and interact with my own trauma, patterns, depression, and personality. This list is by no […]
We’re a people obsessed with timelines and enslaved to expectations. We operate under the neatness and predictability of our black-and-white plans, checking the necessary boxes as we go. We do what we should when we should. But grief laughs in the face of expectations. It eats expectations for breakfast and then belches obnoxiously in punctuation. […]
I first realized something was terribly wrong with Andrea Johnson when we were thrown together as college roommates. While I slept half my young life away, she was up by 6 on Saturday mornings doing insane things like making homemade maple syrup for our weekend pancakes. Her endless energy baffled me as much then as […]
“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” – Olivia Shaver, my mother One day in 6th grade, my parents called a family meeting. In quiet voices, with worried eyes, they told my brother, sister, and I they were getting a divorce. No one spoke for an eternity. The sound of my hysterical laughter eventually broke […]
Having a baby at 31 is a far cry from having a baby at 21. Especially when it’s your 5th baby in 10 years. You’re near-death tired, you’re jaded by a decade of mothering, you’ve been there and done that. Multiple times. First kids get their parents’ best energy and worst parenting. Everything is a […]
Every February, after the groundhog does or doesn’t see his shadow, after the Valentines are distributed and devoured, a dark cloud descends, uninvited, upon my world. Regardless of what the groundhog has said. For me, mid-February always means at least 6 more weeks of winter. Since 2010, the middle of February through May 15 is […]