Category Archives: eating

My Superpower is Messing Up

cup-flower

Like everyone I know, I’ve done some things that make me feel ashamed. I’ve said hurtful things to people I love. I’ve been lazy about things that needed my attention. I failed my children in ways that none of us probably even know yet. I’m not always the best partner to my husband that I can be. All of these things keep me up at night, sometimes, but all I can do is move forward: try to do better, mind my words, do the things that must be done, and be mindful in my relationships.

That all feels infinitely more possible than coping with the problematic image at the top of this post. Continue Reading…

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Reclaiming Me

findingme

I’m nearly done with the full book manuscript.

Writing the story of my life as my younger daughter’s mother has been a spiritual quest for the kernel of who I really am — a trail mix of who I was before she came and even before her sister came, who I was when she was sick, and who I was free to become when she was well. Every day that I sit in front of this screen and pick apart layers of the story, I learn something about each element of the nourishment that grew me into this person. It has been profound, and blessed, and, indeed, holy.

In the last chapter, I write about the way we woke up to each other when she was finally well. Continue Reading…

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What I’m Listening to This Summer

podcasts

Someday, they tell me, the midwest will begin summer. For now, we’re in what I imagine mid-spring Seattle is like, with buckets of rain and temperatures in the hoodie-and-jeans range. However, I’ve lived in the midwest for decades now, and I know that we’ll go right from this to scorching summer. As soon as the cottonwood fluff clears from the air and my lungs calm down, I’ll be back outside, running along the lakefront, the same routes that have taken me out of my worries and onto another spiritual plane for the last eight years.

Moving my body in the early mornings past gardens and parks and not-yet-open cafes has always been a salve for me. I often say that I don’t like running but I like having run, but that’s not entirely true; I also like seeing and feeling the world on my own feet and at my own pace, alone, in the quiet.

But sometimes it’s too quiet. And sometimes it’s too early to listen to Salt-n-Pepa. That’s when I find podcasts to be just the thing. Continue Reading…

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10 Things of Thankful, Kitchen Edition

My kitchen used to be a prison, and now it’s a sanctuary.

In the early years of my younger daughter’s life, she had to follow a series of complicated medically prescribed diets that left me frantic for recipes and alternative products. The kitchen was the battlefield where I wrestled gluten-free starches and egg substitutes and strange milk alternatives into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was where I brought many times the normal grocery budget for one year, and a head-scratching selection of 1980s diet foods for one terrible spring. That kitchen held the answer as to whether my daughter would eat well or starve. It was where I gave up me for her.

But something happened once she was well, and eating normally, and it happened to both of us.

After a while, I missed the thrill of the battlefield. I missed the puzzle of ingredients that I could assemble into a picture that made sense. I missed using my skills. I began, over the years that followed, to love my kitchen. When I cook or bake something delicious and beautiful, I feel a sense of accomplishment that is, finally, not also connected to fear of what might have happened if I failed. When I’m doing it, I am both energized and peaceful. I’m now grateful to be in my kitchen. Continue Reading…

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Doors Made Into Windows

I’ve always loved beautiful doorways.

Especially when they are exterior doors — with one side facing the world and one side inside a private space — I’m forever pulling out a camera or a phone to photograph them. They are, of course, artful ways to say “keep out.”

In biblical times, nomads were considered the most generous when, deep in the desert, they opened their tents on all sides to welcome the stranger. In fact, welcoming the stranger is one of the most valued traits in the lessons of the Old Testament. It is all the more perplexing and, in fact, heartbreaking, that the doors of the biblical land of Israel are among the most beautiful I’ve seen in the world. Continue Reading…

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