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Giving Care and Taking It

| It was the summer of 2010 | His crying echoed in my head. Wait. My eyes blinked open. I wasn’t sleeping. Tears hugged my cheeks as they rolled off my face. I began to move. I breathed in deeply, using each breath to catapult upward. The crying grew louder as my senses adjusted. I(…)

7 Years

2010 Seven years ago today Aiden underwent a thoracotomy, a big, unexpected surgery for such a teeny-tiny five month old. Aiden needed a chest tube placed to support drainage from a pleural effusion. At the time, complicated pneumonia was thought to be the culprit, a misdiagnosis that ended up saving his life. I remember the(…)

About Last Night

| DECEMBER 20th| Breathing in the acknowledgement of continued misfortune, I widened my hands on the rental car wheel, ten and two abruptly transformed into nine and three. I simultaneously paired my grip to the expanse of the turn. I felt the wheels shift seamlessly under my feet. Headlights from behind briefly befuddled my gaze.(…)

Anatomy of Grief and Guilt

It was 8:45PM on a Friday. I couldn’t ignore the aching, the pit-of-the stomach kind. It was the bits.  The dark bits of everything coming together. The union of bits was breaking me apart. I pulled myself out of bed, ignored the rambling Netflix sitcom buzzing in the background, and stumbled to my mirror. I’m(…)

Coffee and Timber

Read this post intro here.  Why? Auto-response on: “…because I said so.” 😉 I can feel heat against my right shoulder. The rain has stopped and sunshine is making another appearance. Out the window cars are glistening from the midday shower. Passersby who decided to seek refuge under the covered entrance are making their way(…)

Seashells

I can remember collecting seashells each summer as a child.  I would walk the golden shoreline feeling the familiar squish of sandy goodness between my toes. With a sun hat atop my head, secured by a simple bow beneath my neck, I was on a mission.  Any shiny, dull, colorful, plain, smooth, bumpy shell would(…)

Transparency

Sometimes I crack myself up. The knee-smacking, guttural howling, eyes-watering kind of laughter.  The moments where you have to hold on to the chair you are sitting in for fear you will fall flat on your face.  Usually, in my accident-prone case, that very fear manifests itself in some sort of laughter-induced truth.  I often(…)

Silence

I lost my voice.  The people closest to me felt the lull.  I felt a whopping pile of nothingness. * * * I actually thought about just typing the title and pressing post. A passive aggressive one-two punch at my own psyche. I quickly realized that carrying out a duel with oneself via blog post is(…)

I can do BIG things!

I ever-so-slowly tore the square of yellow paper from the pad.  I pressed the sticky strip against the wall, creating a hard surface, and began writing my prayer in the space provided.  I pressed firmly with the pencil while my hand, on autopilot, wrote the request. “Please pray for the continued health and happiness of(…)

Unrelentingly Beautiful

  I think I hit a breaking point. Scratch that. I did hit a breaking point. It occurred about 4 months ago when I found myself curled on the cold floor of my moonlit kitchen. I had a pint of dark chocolate coconut milk “ice cream” in one hand and the cordless phone in the(…)