When I am Gone
When I’m gone—you will be okay. It may not feel like it on that first day or even the first year. But just as my mom’s last words to me were, “I know you are going to be okay, Kayla”—I promise that you too will be okay.Here are a few words of advice for when you start your expedition to being okay on grief’s long journey.When I’m gone make sure you … [Read more...]
18 Lessons from 18 Years of Marriage
Today Dennis and I celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary. Our marriage is now old enough to be an adult. That is something amazing to me because we are two flawed humans who chose each other day by day. Over the past 18 years of marriage we have succeeded and failed in business, struggled as parents, packed up and started over, lost a … [Read more...]
ObamaCare War on Family Business
I am a creative writer. I’m not a political writer. I am a small business owner. I am not a politician. As a rule I do not talk about politics on social media or my blog. I have avoided even a hint of politics for two reasons. First, because politics are unrelated to the topics I cover in my books. Second, because expressing my political view would … [Read more...]
Lost in Translation
As a child I dreamed of owning a horse, a raccoon and a rabbit in that order of preference. When I was about four years old my parents skipped over my first two requests and brought home a rabbit. The story of the rabbit, as I remember it, starts with the fact that we owned our rabbit for a very short time. In fact she lived with us for such … [Read more...]
The Dialect of Motherhood
Happy Mother's Day! I learned how to be a mother from my own mother. New Dialect I must learn my own language of motherhood, find the words that fit comfortably around my tongue. I have listened to the voice of my mother and extracted from her words a version of my own motherhood, separate and different than hers, however … [Read more...]
Make Christmas Memories
Christmas time is full of memories and opportunities to make new memories. In my childhood family we had a lot of Christmas traditions, some we picked up in various countries, some from my parents childhood and others that my brother and I made up. Many of my favorite memories of childhood revolve around the Christmas holidays. I don’t … [Read more...]
Fierce Love Blurs Negative History
When I was a child my mother never let me use coloring books. She didn’t want me to learn to color within the lines. She taught me to use the entire piece of paper when I colored. She taught me that the sky should take up at least half of the page and not be a tiny blue line at the top of the page. She taught me to use all the colors in the Crayola … [Read more...]
Search the Horizon for a Patch of Blue Sky
When I graduated from high school, I literally walked out of the ceremony, posed for pictures and walked away from everything and everyone that was related to my two years of high school in San Antonio. I went to college at Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon and never looked back. When I left for college I thought I would never step foot in San … [Read more...]
Cats Don’t Have Germs
Our cat Gogo is well known as a troublemaking, food stealing, mischievous character. He is ever present in our house. Where we go, he goes. His involvement in our day starts at the crack of dawn until he safely puts us to bed having supervised our every move. We have all learned to carefully guard our food, vitamins and drinks from Gogo. … [Read more...]
Towering Cupcakes
My daughter checked out the book Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My! by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson from the Crossroads Christian School library last year and started dreaming up what she wanted made for her birthday cupcakes to bring to school. Eventually, I broke down and bought the book so we could return the book to the library. We had so … [Read more...]
