I’ve now been to three Olympic Trials meets as an athlete and two as a spectator. The first two, I only noticed the people who made the team– my heroes. The third I left heartbroken and – as life goes – I started noticing the heartbreaks in every finals heat. Two make the Olympics, six …
I remember saying in high school that I loved “deep talks”. Not to slight 15 to 18-year-olds but I sometimes wonder what my teenage definition of a deep talk was. I had far more social interactions in high school and college than I do now, so maybe I did get into subjects with more emotional …
New pregnancy rule: Never anticipate the birth of your baby prior to your due date. I know due dates are not precise and your mama gut sometimes knows better, but Skylar ruined us by coming 16 days before her due date. I barely had started to look for signs of labor when she came darting …
The Merriam-Webster definition of “joy” is “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” I’ve been pondering the idea of joy a lot lately because I feel like much of it was sucked out of me when my mom passed away in February. I’d always considered myself involuntarily joyful. I’ve had little to not rejoice about …
I don’t know where to start. I’ve become a different person since my last post. My mom has gone onto eternity and left those who love her so fiercely on this earth. This experience of grief has been nightmarish, grounding, joyful, gut-twisting, faith-affirming, existential, and productive. I’m sure there are 20 other emotions I missed. …
I had just finished filling up my tires at QT yesterday when a woman came up and tapped on my car window. Her cheeks were sunken, her teeth were rotting and her body was wasting away. She asked if she could have some money to go buy a sandwich. This woman looked like she needed …
Do you remember your first aspiration? I’m not sure if I came by goal-setting naturally…I actually think swimming eventually drilled it into my thick skull. But I remember wanting to win at an early age. Anything really. I wanted to go to the Olympics, though I had no idea what that meant. I wanted to …
We live in weird times. I watch period films and envy the simplicity of their lives…the reading rooms in homes actually used for reading. I’m grateful for medical advances and the fact that women are now encouraged to exercise, but I’m not exceedingly thankful for social media, online advertising, basically everything that snares us into …
Matt and I watched “You’ve Got Mail” last week. I had actually never seen the classic rom-com all the way through. If you haven’t seen it, Meg Ryan plays Kathleen Kelly, the owner of a children’s book store which is about to go under due to the opening of a huge corporate bookstore, Fox Books. …
Yesterday, Skylar and I went to Hobby Lobby. I just had a few Christmas crafts needs. It wasn’t going to be a long trip. Skylar would sit in the cart happily with her snack, of course… We entered the store and Skylar refused the hospitable cold metal cart seat. In her defense, she’s getting too …