Stories to encourage and inspire… from the all encompassing heart of a mother
To tell the truth, I should have known better. I mean, doing a post about parenting a pre-teen through the perilous waters of social media is just asking for trouble, right? I knew opening the conversation would open the door for me to be judged for my choices and place my daughter’s newsfeed under…
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On the second day of January, this year, I found myself wandering around a cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts… at sunset. Given the historical context of the area, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to stop there. Given the timing of this stop on my journey and the things that I have witnessed along the way,…
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My 11-year old daughter just left the house to go meet her new baby sister. The changes that have unfolded in her life, that have led to this moment, have been touched on in these posts, but they don’t have to be known to be evident. Changes are a normal part of growing up, and…
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“Pretty’s not a pie that there’s only so much of…” That’s how I began a book I wrote for my daughter when she was 5. She was beginning to experience the subtle peer messaging that is aimed at how we look and as she was my 4th child and 3rd daughter, this wasn’t my first…
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Dance routine… That pairing of words has never, ever, made sense to me. Because, as a noun, routine is simply a sequence of actions or a fixed program and when used as a descriptor it’s something performed as part of a regular procedure rather than for a special reason. Fixed. Regular. No special reason. Those…
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It’s a simple photo. A single microphone on a stage brought to life by the spotlight. There are no humans in the shot but the image, taken at a music festival this past weekend, brought me to tears. It is quite dramatic… and I am not a musician, but I felt moved by the power…
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Somewhere between early September and late October, last year, something in my life shifted. Imperceptibly, at first, but I must have made a wish, or something, that changed the degree of an internal guidance system, just enough, to land me, in a basket on a dirt track next to a paintball course, a long,…
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At the end of the day… or week… or decade… the reality of a rich, full life results, sometimes, in feeling a little poorer. Grief over losing someone dear calls into question everything we allow into our lives — like a balance sheet of pros and cons or a record of wins and losses. Sadness,…
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I can’t even…. I hear these words often from fellow mothers when looking at pictures of their children that pop up on Facebook’s time hop. Like, “I can’t even deal with how cute she was” or “I can’t even believe how much he has grown”. So when unpacking a box of Christmas things from years…
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And then she did the most miraculous, unexpected thing… she asked if, instead of relegating Daisy to a shelf as christmas decor, she took over and did it for me. She wanted to give back the joy of waking every morning to a new experience. A new joy. A new play on an old ploy for goodness as a guide for behavior.
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MamaBearings 