Writing, living, and healing in the PNW
Warning: “bad” language ahead. “Fuck!” I said, starting to get irritated. “Goddamn it.” My five year old said, sitting on the counter and watching me. Yea, we definitely could not be featured on the family friendly television channels. I burst out laughing, all irritation vanished, and I remembered this was supposed to be fun. We…
Everything is easier together. The only reason I got through my childhood is that I had my brother and sisters, younger siblings to be strong for. The reason my marriage has worked for ten years with no major bumps or bruises is that my husband and I both want it to work. My tutoring center…
I have taken on this 25 days of writing challenge called “blogmas.” I am now halfway through crazy (Trust me. Crazy.) So I took a day to stop and rest. Blogmas One of the Facebook blogging groups I am in introduced me to this idea of blogging every day in December, ideally with a Christmas…
A trend on Instagram as a way to maximize followers is to find accounts similar to yours, with hashtags similar to yours, and follow them. Typically, the person sees you have followed him or her, looks at your account, likes it, and follows you back. Now you have gained a new follower. Sometimes you wait…
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Quite often, in an effort to help, we end up hurting. Hubris and humility are the two sides of the road we find ourselves on when we are seeking to change the world. A few years ago, France passed a law banning women from wearing the hijab. The liberal, liberated…
“Intentional Living” is one of the big buzz terms everywhere in the world of self improvement. Who are you? The goal of intentional living is to get you to answer that question and then live accordingly. We are what we do. We are what we say. And we are what we think. So decide who…
I learned very early on that I would have to read outside the box if I wanted to get outside of my small world. Sandra Cisneros, in The House on Mango Street, talks about the confining feeling of her city streets. Escape was unheard of. The scrawny trees stretched their branches toward the sky, desperate,…
I Cannot Do It Alone I could not ever do what all do if I didn’t ask for help. I have spent my whole life watching women do it all – work full time jobs, care for their children, cook, clean, shop for food, pay bills. Women’s liberation gave us access to the workplace, and…
I am busy. I have a lot on my plate. There have been other periods in my life like this: finals in college; working three jobs at a time in my twenties; teaching at three different locations the summer I got pregnant with Celaya. But those periods were always temporary and short lived. I always…
I once had a girlfriend, my best friend, in the seventh grade, call me ugly. She laughed, and she was being funny. She thought she was being funny. But yes, she giggled, and called me “ugly.” Girls can be so mean. So very mean. I shrugged it off. I don’t know why it didn’t break…