A Year of Firsts

Rediscovering magic in the everyday.

Grief

  • Year One: That’s a Wrap

    Welcome back to January. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I started this writing journey.  Wait….that’s not true. I actually CAN believe it. I have felt every blessed minute of this past year. None of it flew by. Literally none of it. Even the parts that people usually say “wow, that flew… Read more

  • Grief over Missing Out

    Ever since I got COVID for the first time, I have noticed that all of my colds kind of play out the same way. I start getting lethargic, with a sore throat that I can kind of ignore. Then a fever, chills, and three days of searingly painful congestion set in. Every part of my… Read more

  • Wrapped

    Over the past week, my Instagram was flooded with my friends’ Spotify Wrapped images and videos. Do you get those?  Up until recently, I haven’t been a Spotify user, so I don’t get a “wrapped.” There certainly is something about December that makes you want to count up all of your goods and bads, successes… Read more

  • Summer Check In: 8 months

    If getting through January is like watching concrete dry, then August is like pouring honey into a cup of tea; it’s golden and sticky and sweet, and while it looks slow and lazy, it disappears way too fast.  I can’t believe school is starting here in just a few days (I know it’s already started… Read more

  • Influencer

    I hope you had a beautiful weekend. The last weekend of July is usually a big one. There’s lots of festivals, happenings, and get-togethers. This past weekend we celebrated my mother-in-law Martha’s life and art with family and friends at the Ruth Wells Center for the Arts, where Martha used to teach and live in… Read more

  • Death on Vacation

    It’s been challenging to write weekly over the summer. Partially because my daughter is home with me everyday and alone time is more scarce, and also because my brain is constantly boiling and after using it for the non-optional tasks, there is not much left. And yes, I do have AC, but somehow while that… Read more

  • Knots

    I remember my dad packing a bunch of something in the back of a truck with me. I don’t know if it was one of the many times I moved, or a vacation, or some other occasion where I was moving a bunch of stuff from point A to point B. He would remind me… Read more

  • Tangibles and Intangibles

    This week, my husband pointed out that our kousa dogwood had its first ever blossoms. Several years ago my mother-in-law, knowing that I really wanted one, came to visit and presented me with a long stick with a root ball that she had placed in her trunk. When I asked her what it was, she… Read more

  • Evolution of Grief

    This week has been a hard one. I saw this picture of the evolution of grief. It’s just meme psychology, of course, oversimplifying something really complicated. But the idea I liked was this: grief never really goes away, but we build our lives around it and learn to live with it. In this book on… Read more

  • Spring Check-in: Four months

    In February, I posted a two month check in so I decided to try that again. It was a nice mile marker for me. I used to really love doing my annual review at work. Not necessarily for the accolades, but I always enjoyed the exercise of reviewing my goals, writing down what I had… Read more