The story that opens this essay was so heartbreaking! My kids are usually okay with death, but dead parents are a whole different thing.
Here’s the first few paragraphs:
My two-year-old’s face was blank. Then it curved down into the slightest of frowns, as he stared at the open magazine’s page. As he’s usually a very expressive kid, I had never seen this look before.
But then, I had never read a line in a story quite like that: “This baby skunk lost its mother.”
Sierra Magazine was one of my dream publications to write for and Kandi Mossett is a complete badass, so I was so glad to profile her for them.
In 1999, Kandi Mossett found a purple-red, pea-size lump on her stomach and immediately suspected cancer. She was 20 years old. For Native Americans on the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota, cancer is a fact of life.
I brought my kids to the People’s Climate March a couple of years ago and I’m likely to again, especially with the youth climate movement ramping up. I wrote about why in a post for Ravishly.
Here’s the first few paragraphs:
“Anyone have tips for bringing a kid to a political protest?” one of my friends posted on Facebook.
It was around the March for Our Lives, and he was trying to make a decision many parents were facing. But almost every single response was negative. Several people implied he would be putting his child in danger. At the time, I was the lone voice of dissent. Trying to be encouraging, I responded, “As someone who actually did this, my kids were fine.”
But they were more than just fine. They were great.
I’ve never felt like I’ve known so little about something I have so much experience with than in parenting. I wrote about it (back in 2018) for Filter Free Parents.
Whenever someone asks about the birth story of my younger son, I usually start with, “Well, I was in an interview at NASA…” That start always gets them listening! I had the privilege of being able to share this story over at Romper with my article “I Went into Labor During a Job Interview and Lived to Tell the Tale.”
Here’s the first paragraph:
“I may be having pre-labor pains,” I said, trying to smile at the NASA employee about to interview me. “So if you see me making some funny faces, that’s why.” He paused for a split second. Then he nodded and chuckled like “ha ha, NBD.” NASA deals with landing robots on planets millions of miles away, so I guess a woman possibly in labor figures low on the excitement scale. As he passed through the security gate, I followed him, waddling along. Going on a job interview while pregnant isn’t anyone’s dream situation to begin with, but neither of us quite anticipated what we were in for.
Read the rest – including why I screamed at my husband for making a sandwich – over at Romper.
Note: this article went up a full year ago and I forgot to share it then. There will be several more like this in the next few weeks as I update my page.
They say the “Days are long but the years are short.” At least for me, the nights of parenting little people are the longest. But even those long nights have beauty in them. I wrote a guest post for Her View from Home about finding that grace for myself and my children through my Christian faith.
Here’s the first paragraph of “Embracing Grace in the Long Nights of Motherhood“:
Sitting on the worn futon in the back of our church, my eyes fluttered as I watched my one-year-old toddle around. While trying to listen to the sermon, I reflected on the rough time we experienced the night before. But when I looked beyond that single night, I saw a love so all-encompassing it carried me through the dark.
Visit Her View from Home to read more!
“You need to stop using that word,” my husband says whenever I start a sentence with “I should really….” It turns out, he’s right. All of that focus on “should” spikes my anxiety and makes me feel like I’m not enough.
From not worrying so much about my kids’ birthday parties to forgoing a first-day-of-school sign, I’ve been learning to care less and less about what I “should” be doing as a parent. So I wrote about my journey and what’s helped me over at Perfection Pending: Why We Need to Take the Word Should Out of Our Parenting (now hosted at Filter Free Parents).
Here’s the introduction:
At midnight, the day before my son’s very first day of preschool, I committed a mortal parenting sin. I chose not to make a sign for his first-day-of-school photos. Now, this may seem like a minor offense – at best. After all, I wasn’t sending him to bed without his dinner.
But if you underestimate how momentous this decision was, you clearly missed the barrage of back-to-school Facebook posts by parents of small children. Even among my fairly low-key friends, there was a parade of increasingly elaborate signs, ranging from cute printouts all the way up to actual chalkboards.
But me? I bowed out of all of it.
Read more over at Perfection Pending!
What are your favorite stories from childhood? While I have many beloved fictional stories, I also hold the family stories my parents hold me close to my heart. Now, we share those stories and others with our kids as part of a long tradition.
I wrote about the power of sharing stories over at A Fine Parent with the article “How to Use the Power of Stories to Connect and Teach.”
Gathered around a fire, a mother and child talk in quiet voices.
The flames leap as the mother tells the child stories of ancestors, far-away lands, and fantastic situations. Drowsy, the child falls asleep, her head on her mother’s lap.
This could be a scene from 10,000 years ago or 10 days ago.
Storytelling is a core part of what makes us human.
I love gardening so much that I nicknamed my kid after a plant. (No, Sprout is not his real name. Yes, I’ve had people ask me that.) So of course, it was natural for me to continue it when I had kids. And like all things that I both like and are good for sustainability, I love to write about it!
So I was thrilled to bits when the Washington Post accepted my piece on the science of why you should garden with your kids. As I researched the article, even I learned a lot about the benefits of getting outside, having a healthy relationship with germs, and eating fruits and vegetables.
Here are the first few paragraphs:
———–
When our cherry tomatoes blush red each summer, my son eagerly plucks them from the vine and pops them in his mouth. He points at random plants and proudly declares, “That one’s mine!” And occasionally, he yells in panic as the hose from the rain barrel overflows his tiny watering can.
Admittedly, gardening with kids isn’t always idyllic.
But even when it’s chaotic, it can be tremendously beneficial.
———–
Read more of How Gardening Can Help Build Happier, Healthier Kids over at the Washington Post’s On Parenting section!
What do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, surprising canoe trips, and bad decisions have in common? This story, involving one of the adventures Chris and I had in the Adirondacks far before we had kids. Misadventures Magazine was lovely enough to publish An Unexpected Tour of the Adirondacks! (Unfortunately, Misadventures is no longer in print. You can read the entire essay on my site now.)
Here’s the first three paragraphs:
A crying girl, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a supermarket parking lot. Not exactly the elements for an epic summit. But having missed the turn-off for our hike, we were now on the wrong side of Lake George in upstate New York, eating the lunches we were supposed to be having on the peak.
By the way, I was the crying gir
“This is your fault!” I pouted to my then-boyfriend, Chris, even though I had the map. I curled up in the passenger’s seat of his Civic, my tears falling on my bread. “If you hadn’t been speeding…”