My Book Now Available!

UPDATE MARCH 29, 2023: At the time I wrote this post, there was no physical copy of this book (only a read-aloud of an earlier version via podcast). But now the book, complete with text and illustrations, exists! You can find it here: ORIGINAL POST: *At this time, there is no hard copy of this…

Motherhood When It’s All Too Much (Podcast #31)

Have you ever found yourself wondering what you were thinking when you believed you were capable of raising children into adulthood? Or have you ever been overwhelmed by a season in your family when it just all seemed too much? Sometimes, this happens to me. (Ok, it happens to me a lot…) I realize that…

The Birth Story to Come: Impressions of a Life Yet Unseen

I love to have conversations about birth. No matter how many times I find myself here, in the “any day now” space between pregnancy and delivery, I am struck by the sheer power of the experience of bringing a baby into this world. There is nothing routine about it. No matter how many times you…

Wake Up and Make Things

It is early morning. I stole away from the nursing baby and am sitting in my little quiet corner of the world, on my back-deck, surrounded by potted plants and birdsong. I am writing and contemplating my messy life. I am a homeschooling mother of seven children. My husband and I have a home business…

Motherhood and Creative Fire, Keeping the Flame Alive

I am the mother of seven children. This weekend, I hit publish on a dream come true. I’ve spent the last 11 weeks in a state of creative flow that I have not experienced since I became a Mama twelve and a half years ago. Looking back, I remember the shock my body went through…

The Space Between Here and a Miracle

If you are up, like me, at 2 a.m., wrestling with questions that do not seem to have answers, tired of trying to drown out your own thoughts so you can finally get some sleep, welcome to this post.  Get up and join me at my kitchen table.  It is soooo quiet.  I just got…

Grief is a River

Grief is a river that now runs through my life.  Sometimes it is slow and steady, passing gently over rocks of remembrance, pooling up in beautiful, idyllic scenes where the late afternoon sun brushes through the trees and paints the waters and the riverbank in bright splashes of quivering light.  The aching beauty of having…

Being There (On the Shores of Life and Loss)

A week ago we cried over the body of my beloved Mother.  She is gone.  This keeps hitting me like ocean waves, one after the other. How it swells.  How it breaks.   It all seems like a dream.  The next day was of course a birthday.  My daughter’s third. The only time to cry was…

Standing in the Hallway of Sorrow, thoughts on losing my Mother

(In honor of my beautiful, selfless Mother who went home to be with Jesus yesterday afternoon, hours after I wrote this post.) I am going to write something that is braver and stronger than I now feel, but I believe it with all my heart. Daddy met Mama on a Sunday morning at a little…

Voices of My Life, an abridged biography

It’s easy to look back over years as a series of big events–the day I was born, schools I attended, graduations, marriage, jobs held, the birthdays of my children…  These are the visible rings around my tree, the important details in a brief biography of my life. But when I close my eyes and let…

Thoughts on My Mother and the Miracle of Existing in this World

My Mama had nine children.  I am the youngest.  The fact that I exist in this world at all is not a small miracle.  I see it all now, like the iconic scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, where Mary is closing up the library.  A world where I don’t exist.  My husband is scorching…