words in the midst of a messy + beautiful life
Last week, my son was sick. Between the stomach virus and the ear infection, he was not a happy camper, and sleep was hard to come by in our house. Whether it was his fever or aches, the coughing or goopy eyes, he woke up consistently every one to two hours, for three or four nights straight. On top of that, my husband had just had his wisdom teeth removed, and the pain combined with … Read the rest
My mother was my first country,
the first place I ever lived.
(Nayyirah Waheed)
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Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and, like most of us, I’ve got some feelings about it.
It’s a day some people love and other people would rather skip over. A lot of us, I suspect, are caught somewhere in the in-between. Sometimes, it brings up painful memories surrounding our own mothers, or how we have mothered our children. Sometimes, it reminds … Read the rest
If you’ve been following my story, you’ll know that in late 2017, I started asking questions to try and gather more information about my birth father and my ancestry. It started with a yearly checkup at the doctor’s office and a questionnaire I had to fill out about family history. Literally more than half of it was left blank because I simply didn’t know how to answer. I know it might not seem like a … Read the rest
It’s been over a month since I shared with you that I am on a journey—a journey to recover the lost pieces of myself; to find a solid footing in the roots of my ancestors; to take back the story that was stolen from me by an absent father and a buried heritage.
It’s been three weeks since I dropped my DNA collection kit in the mail, sending it off to a … Read the rest
It’s that time of year again.
We’re just a few days away from January and new year’s resolutions and fresh starts, so naturally I’ve started thinking about #OneWord365 and what word I’m going to lean into in 2018. Some years, I choose the word with intentionality, a specific goal in mind. Other years, the word chooses me. It comes to me unexpectedly–the first thought upon waking in the morning or washing breakfast dishes or, … Read the rest
I am born.
It is 12:55 am on a cold Canadian winter’s night. My mother has labored long, but I have gotten myself stuck in her birth canal, hesitant, I suppose, to come out and greet the world. She births me through a slit in her abdomen, just as her mother before birthed her, and I, thirty-two years later, will birth my own son. The women in my family give life through our stomachs, it … Read the rest
The sun went down at 4:35 this afternoon.
The sky was bleak, filled with clouds all day, and around 4:00 the gray began to grow darker, eventually bleeding into black. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are entering the season in which our days are short and our nights are long. The light is dim these days, and the shadows are everywhere.
Perhaps you feel it, too?
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I am always struck at … Read the rest
I’ve felt it running after me for a while now:
The lure of more, more, more; of adding just one extra thing; of filling in every square on the the calendar with this event or that meeting; of staying up too late and waking up too early; of cramming things in during the day’s leftovers; of fighting for a seat at the table; of dissatisfaction and ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ … Read the rest
If you have been following this blog or any of my social media accounts in the last few months, you’ll have read a few posts about J, my heart-daughter, whom we are in the process of adopting. When we set out on this journey, we knew it would be strenuous one. The process is long, and the emotional roller-coaster that everyone said we’d find ourselves on is furious; the highs are high, and the … Read the rest
Somebody that I used to know recently unfriended me on Facebook. And Twitter. And Instagram. Oh, and blocked me.
Her reasoning was that she felt like she didn’t know who I was anymore and no longer recognized me in posts I have made. Fair enough. I could agree (to a certain extent). I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation in recent days for not shying away from talking … Read the rest
