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Fighting the Darkness

Posted on October 29, 2014

Sometimes things alight on me, magical things—good moods, optimism, luck, butterflies. I revel in their arrival and do my best to enjoy them while they’re here. Other times things come to roost that aren’t the kind of thing that you share on Instagram or gush about over lunch. Anger, despair, even defeat. They cling to me without warning, more like oil than solid weight, suffocating me and defying any sort of strength or resistance. I do my best to avoid what I think may be triggers—comparisons to other people’s lives, reading the headlines, but sometimes the emotions are here before I realize it. The video that made the rounds yesterday about a woman getting catcalled switched my spirit to darkness like a switch. I cringed as…

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Categories: Roar

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It’s Ok to Shrug It Off

Posted on October 24, 2014

There is a recurring conversation (lecture?) that we have around here. Specifically, there is a talk that Sean has with me that goes a little something like, “You care too much. The worrying you do and the constant moving of  your finish line are unhealthy. You never let yourself be done.” Let that sink in, because there may be a good chance that you do it too. The kids have a finite list of things to do. Sometimes a to-do might get added, but generally there is a, “Great job, thank you! You can have free time now,” resolution for them. I don’t afford that same possibility of finishing for myself. There is almost always a low muttering of, “I should do…” or “I…

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Categories: Me

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Hints of What Matters Amid the Chaos

Posted on October 22, 2014

  Time is doing that thing, that thing that reveals how fast it goes even while some days seem to last for weeks. It isn’t the back-to-school blur or a concentration of deadlines at work, though those are both real and present. It’s the toss of hair and expressiveness of Finley’s eyebrows, her declarations of, “It’s just odd!” followed by a quick scan of the room to see if we all caught how mature she is. It’s Briar slipping quietly into a private realm, emotions and Minecraft, daydreams and song lyrics. The way Avery thrashes in the night, limbs too long for her pjs and shocks of hair that when tucked behind her ear, reveal new hollows in her face. I buck against the…

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Categories: Mama Sap, Random

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I Call Bull-Sham on John Grisham

Posted on October 17, 2014

I took a Facebook break last week, something about the realization that logging on was a choice that consistently made me feel not good spurred the move. I did the same thing with the news (except for that one damn brown recluse spider story.) I cannot remember what headline made me click over to see what exactly John Grisham had said about pedophiles, but I did click. I saw his face, familiar to me from so many book jackets in our house as I grew up. He was a pulpy author, but people didn’t tend to scoff too much if you had his book in your overnight bag. I read them.   I remembered his name in the context of the actors who played roles in his…

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Categories: Random, Roar

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Passionate Distortion-Making Sense of Life

Posted on October 13, 2014

I remember the first time I took the girls to Target as a reward. They had helped me clear leaves in the backyard and I had told them that I would take them to the store to pick out a treat. It just didn’t occur to me how difficult it would be for them to manage the sensory assault. Each aisle made their eyes a bit wilder, each new shelf of LEGOS, Barbie, and My Little Pony made them blurt, “This, this is it.” “Easy, easy. Take a minute, just walk with me and let’s try to decide which thing is the most interesting,” I said walking and scanning the shelves. “Ok,” Ave said as she tossed a box back into a bin and took…

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Categories: Roar

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