It’s the 4th of December. My little swath of the Midwest is dealing with some wintry wonderland weather. We had a snowstorm that dumped more than a half foot of snow on us this past weekend and today the wind chill is below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It looks like Christmas outside. Inside, the tree is […]
Tag: family
Family
I just spent a whirlwind three days on the East coast visiting my blood family. As many of you know, I live in this tiny swath of the Midwest that is also called the Des Moines Metro area of Iowa. I don’t have ANY blood family here. The reason I live here is because many […]
Go be your favorite self
Once upon a time (more like some twenty odd years ago),I wrote this in one of my journals after a wonderful discussion with the middle school kids I worked with (who are now all adults with families and lives of their own): Lord, please help me to be the person my youth group kids think […]
Rest well. Your story has ended
As if this month couldn’t get any weirder….. My uncle died this past Saturday. It was unexpected, at least from my scope of the story, but not entirely unexpected. You see, he was an uncle by marriage, married to my eldest maternal aunt. My memories of him were filled with him being loud and obnoxious […]
Grief comes like a thief
It has taken me days to get words to paper, as it should. This past Saturday night, after saying good bye to one of my besties who had spent the day with us, the other half and I decided to call his dad and stepmother to check in on them. Today, I am grateful I […]
Chicago
Having a family history that spans pretty much one state (I’m looking at you, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!) and the Eastern Seaboard, I never really thought much about the city of Chicago. I read about it for my history classes. I learned facts that seemed to go in one ear and then out the other about […]
Beautiful messes
Many of us have been called labels instead of names. Self-centered. Narcissist. Radical. Socialist. Sinner. Dumb ass. Stupid. Selfish. Crazy. We carry these labels, shouldering them alongside the weight of all that we are, all that we need to do, all that we have to be. Sometimes, we carry so much weight and have so […]
A story ended
I had started to write a post about my crazy weekend, but the words have fallen flat in light of something that weighs heavily on my heart. You see, another in my circle has been taken away. This was a friend and cheerleader, a wonderful old soul that may have been short in stature, but […]
Recognize the Spark
Recently, I was asked a question. How do you feel loved and connected? I had answered “my family.” But I didn’t mean only the family of blood I have that is dispersed all over the United States, but the family I have made as well, who continue to bless me and keep me on this path […]
Weddings and Funerals
I was recently at a wedding for one of the other half’s oldest friends, whom we call his sister even though they are not blood related. It was a wedding to which we traveled almost four hundred miles over the course of a day. Many of the old friends had gathered for this wedding, bringing […]
K. S. Wood Writes 