How we think of ourselves

One thing I have had to come to terms with in recent years is the fact that I am disabled. Now, it probably shouldn’t have been such a strange concept. My attendance in high school was somewhere in the vicinity of 50%, after all. But I was in the top ten percent of my class. … Read more

A Fourth

When we were dating, my husband and I discussed kids, as anyone contemplating a life together really should do. We were agreed: we wanted four. Four would be great. We were pragmatic enough to leave it open ended. We might not make it to four. I might not tolerate pregnancy well. We might find conceiving … Read more

Paying the Bills

I don’t know how to write this post, not really, so let’s see how it shapes up. One of the most difficult things for me as a wife has been watching my husband sacrifice so much, over and over, just to pay our bills. My health has never been great, so the amount of stress … Read more

Beauty from Pain

Content Warning: This post is about stillbirth I was supposed to make this post on Tuesday. The migraines haven’t let up, though. And this week it’s more than that. This post is more than that. Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday. Except, I still don’t feel right calling it that. Nor is it the anniversary of … Read more

It Wasn’t Failure, It Was Betrayal

I shared in a post to my Pieces of the Mosaic series about a time our lives were diverted because others failed to make the right call. It was painful, but it wasn’t really personal. They had failed themselves as much as they had failed us, anyway. It was hardly our worst experience. See, my … Read more

My Education

It’s 10:30 pm on Saturday, and this was due (by my own schedule, but still) on Tuesday at 10:00 am. Is anyone surprised at this point? You shouldn’t be if you’ve been paying attention. Anyway, I figure this is a good place to share the story of my education. It’s a good one, story and … Read more

Let’s Talk

This was supposed to go up Tuesday. It’s 11pm Thursday night. I’m just writing it now. My brain does not like to process stress. My brain likes to pretend it can ignore stress while slowly making me more and more grumpy until it just shuts down, like a drain that slowly collects gunk until it’s … Read more

Pieces of Me

I thought it would be helpful if I shared my story. For those of you coming to the blog a bit later on, yes, I shared four posts in this category before going back to write an introduction. That is a prime example of part of my story: I have ADHD, and I’m making this … Read more

Delays

Well, this is my life. I haven’t posted in two weeks. I promised to look into prescheduled posts, and I never did, and then I hit a week of exhaustion followed by a week of severe migraines, and I didn’t post for two weeks. But that’s my life. That’s my health. This is probably the … Read more

Chronically Grateful

When I was on vacation somewhere around fifth or sixth grade, I had the pizza at a seafood restaurant. I have no idea if that’s relevant. I didn’t like seafood, though. I got sick. I got really weirdly sick. I didn’t have a life-threatening fever or hospitalizing dehydration or anything, just a lot of pain … Read more