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 […]

Perfectly acceptable

I haven’t written a great deal this week, as I am dealing with some mental blocks and an impending visit from some family members. But I wanted to sit down in the coolness of this early spring morning as the sun starts to peek through my eastern windows and write a bit of wisdom I […]

Road Trips: Part Deux

My last blog post dealt with some of my musings from the road trip my husband and I just completed. This post deals with the other half of those musings. Unlike other trips to the Windy City where we stayed with some of the members of the other half’s family, since we had the funds […]