brand new day

This evening I was making dinner to the kids' chatter of make-believe and good music.  It was in the midst of a busy afternoon, shuttling kids to Tae Kwon Do and ballet amongst other things, and yet I felt unhurried and at peace.  I looked at our life, all the chaos, busyness, work, and felt blessed. My therapist calls it "being in the moment".  I live for those moments.   They are moments of serenity and gratitude.  Glimpses of life unclouded by stress or worries when I can see clearly, even if only for a moment, all the goodness around me and I can be truly grateful.  They're unexpected and unassuming, but when my soul is still enough and my heart is open, they literally take my breath away. When I'm in the moment, I get this sense deep in my soul that it's all going to be okay.  I can expend a lot of energy worrying about the future which usually leads to fear and doubt.  But if I can let go of that and just be present, I am filled with a serenity of kn

I'm doing the best I can, and it is enough.  Sometimes I need to speak it to believe it.  These are hard days, days when it's easy to believe that I can't do enough no matter how hard I try. Lauren lost her Dumbo stuffed animal that she has carried around with her since she was 9 months old.  And there were no histrionics, no fits, just quiet tears and a hope that Santa Claus will be able to mail us one before Christmas with the same blue eyes as her old Dumbo.  She did break down when her sister told her she was sure that wherever Dumbo was, he was missing her.  The thought of him sad and lonely and missing her was too much for her heart to bear.  We have been living in a climate of loss for the past two years and it was so hard to watch this brave little soul handle the loss of her friend so well.  I felt powerless to shield her from the sadness of loss and life, and it weighed so heavy on my heart.  I found myself crying along with her over the loss of Dumbo.  I ordere

My girls were born two years and one day apart and we celebrated their birthdays this weekend.  I love celebrating my kids... they're pretty awesome. I think I have as much fun just sitting back and reflecting on them throughout the day as they do celebrating with cake and presents!  So, in honor of my two birthday girls, some thoughts on the girls... Grace.  Grace amazes me with her self-awareness and confidence.  I love that she lives without apology, she is who she is and that's that.  It's not abrasive, she's very approachable, she just has this quiet confidence about her and she knows and likes who she is.  She is so kind and loving, but a little bit guarded.  She's careful about who she gives her heart to, but if she does, she gives it fully and loves fiercely.  She's always watching and learning, and then assimilating it into her own world in her own way.  She colors fast and furious with lots of colors, and maybe that's age appropriate, but I lo

It's hard not to want to change who I am sometimes.  There are parts of me that I don't like.  And I've realized that in the past there have been more parts of me I don't like than do.  But here's the thing - they're all parts of me nonetheless. There are some things I can't change about myself - it's who I am, and no amount of finagling or wishing it were different will make it so.  For example, I am a self-proclaimed nerd (seriously, who talks like that?  Nerds, like me!).  I like things organized.  I am quiet and introspective.  I need my space.  I'm strong and opinionated.  I am not impulsive.  I like predictability and order.  I like to follow rules.  I can be fiercely independent.  And so on and so forth...  They're not all that bad when they're listed out like that.   In fact, they kinda make me proud in a weird way.  I am discovering that some of those parts that I thought made up the worst in me, are foundations of the best in me.

Sometimes being brave and strong sucks.  Sometimes being brave and strong is lonely and scary and confusing.  And those old dysfunctional habits can look so comforting and familiar, it almost makes my heart ache with a homesick feeling for what used to be.  No matter how destructive it was - it was home to my heart. Forging a new path can be a lot less glamourous than it sounds.   And being brave and sticking to it is hard.  Maybe the brave thing to do is to admit that at this moment, I feel anything but brave and to just sit with it awhile.  Maybe it's more courageous to sit in the muck, in the sadness and confusion, than to just plow ahead headstrong into the unknown, never stopping to catch my breath or to let the tears fall.  That can't be brave.  One of the most courageous things I've ever done was to sink into the sadness and trust that I would find my way out. So tonight I will find strength in my weakness.  I will be brave and face the sadness, knowing that ther

I have lived in the shadows of self-doubt all my life.  I couldn't distinguish the internal messages from reality, and I had a hard time seeing myself for who I was.  Somewhere along the way, I lost myself.  I had a moment two years ago when I literally looked in the mirror and didn't know who I was anymore. I still struggle with it, but I'm rewriting these truths about myself.  So when those old messages of inadequacy start running through my head, I have a new song to sing.  It's hard work, personal rediscovery and redefinition, but it's good work. Sometimes it feels like standing in the middle of a storm with my eyes squeezed shut, fists balled at my side,  and rain cold and steady streaming down my face.  Those are the times when I feel like I'm going to be swallowed up by those old voices telling me I'm not enough, and I have to fight to find a calm within the storm and just repeat what I now know to be true about myself, almost willing the words to

Sometimes I struggle with letting things Be.  Mystery is not intriguing to me, it's infuriating.  I like knowing the how and why.  I like to plan and organize.  I like reason and logic.  That's just how my mind works. I've never found solace in "things happen for a reason" or "there is a plan".   Okay, what?  What is The Reason?  Why did this happen?  What is The Plan?  What am I learning here?  How am I better person for this experience?  Let's line it all up so I can do a cost/benefit analysis and see if all this suffering is worth it.  Or better yet, let's make a chronological timeline with bullet points so I can see all of my missteps and avoid them in the future. But I've learned that imposing order on chaos and searching for answers is sometimes futile.  It's not that they are unanswerable questions, some can be easily answered - succinctly, logically, without emotion - it's just that the answers don't bring resolution,

My kitchen table is so gross, I have to confess...  It was given to us by a retired couple so it had already lived a full life before coming into our lives.  And now it has to suffer through three school-aged kids with less than stellar manners.  Fortunately, it has some sort of impenetrable faux wood laminate type top to it that can survive any craft project and even a day of Henry and Grace playing Nail Salon.  Unfortunately, it also has deep decorative grooves on the side that are perfect nesting places for odd bits of food and other kiddy secretions I don't even want to think about (I grew up with two older brothers, I know a thing or two about little boys schmearing things in cracks and crevices - ew - yep, best not to think about it). It's also a little unsteady because two of its legs are wobbly and we are constantly yanking on them to get them back to a ninety degree angle.  Several weeks ago, my Dad came over when one of the legs was skewed at more of a forty-five de

My little girl is so tough.  She is very kindhearted and loving, and her tender heart can be easily bruised, but she is so quick to wrap her arms around her vulnerability and stand guard.  She's a protector.  She knows just how precious her heart is and that a little piece of her soul is exposed when she's wounded, and she can be fierce about protecting that side of herself. In those moments, there is no distracting her from her hurt, no amount of coddling, reasoning, or bargaining, will get her to release her stronghold on her heart.  I have learned the only way speak to her heart is to honor it.  Honor the pain, the sadness, the anger, the frustration - whatever it is - just honor it.  No matter how irrational or insignificant the cause may be, the injury is so real and must first be acknowledged before she will trust you enough to show you her wounded heart. And when she finally does offer her heart, I realize how right she was to protect her treasure.  It is so tender a

I am a nurse.  It's a career dedicated to helping others with little in return.  It's a hard pill to swallow sometimes, but part of the job.  You get patients who are sick and anxious, and very often feel as if they have no control over what's happening to them - a great recipe for being needy and frustrated - yet, understandably so given what they are going through. Most nights, I go to work knowing that I will be there for twelve hours wherein I will give my all, but that in the end, I can't really "fix" anyone in twelve short hours, that's not why we're there.  So I do what I can and keep them safe through the night, educate them on their health, provide emotional support and good patient care (and did I mention chart excessively?!?). But I had a patient the other night that was one of those patients whose story will stay with me.  Not because it was so traumatic, or we had to call a code on him - none of that hospital drama.  It was a pretty un

It was a fake it 'till you make it kind of a week.  One foot in front of the other, one day at a time.  Get the kids to school, get the chores done, get the kids to bed... one of those weeks where the routine of the mundane was something to hold on to, something to keep me grounded in the present so I wasn't swept away by the chaos of life. It was one of those weeks where the reality of life was at the forefront.  I don't know how many times over the past two years I have had to face reality and grieve the loss of the dream, and I don't know how many more times I have yet to grieve in the future, but it is always so sad.  There are moments when I think I can actually feel my heart breaking somewhere deep inside my chest.  It's as if the dream of what I wanted my life to be is being ripped away but I'm not ready to let it go, and I can feel the breaking of each tie that binds that dream to my heart. But it was also that kind of week where the magic of a Brand