There were many rules in my family but one of the most important was don’t get pregnant before you get married. My sisters and I were to present the perfect picture at all times. Don’t shame the family. I may have been in New Mexico, 1400 miles from my parents in Michigan, but those rules were like blood in my veins. I was a twenty year old mess, drinking heavily, trying to get through college, waitressing and scrambling for money for rent, food, health care, tuition and book

“Everyone lies in the ER.” That statement stayed in my head long after the fear, panic and state of emergency had lessened. It seems as if we all end up in an emergency room at some point in our lives, either as the person in agony, or the advocate for said person. We recently had two very serious emergencies which led to frantic rushing to emergency rooms. The first to a city hospital. The second to hospital closer to home. As afternoon passed into evening on the day of the

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” - Desmond Tutu 2020. The unimaginable happened and the world shut down. As we tried to take it all in, scrambled to feed our families and homeschool our children, the news kept coming at us. Then in May, we, as a nation, had to face our country’s deep-seated racism in the ugliest way imaginable as we witnessed the murder of George Floyd. Families have suffered through job loss, sickness and death dur

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist. Do you know who you are? Seriously. Do you? I have always known who I wanted to be. What kind of woman I wanted to be. But I wasn’t always her and I am not always her. But I keep trying, standing up straighter, learning, leaning in, thinking and of course, trying to figure it all out. When I started my life coaching cert

With the shutdown of the country came the shutdown of my writing. I have published exactly two blog posts and one magazine article since THE PANDEMIC. That is not a great amount. Everything else I start to write seems so trivial or else so horrible that it would take pages to delve into even one particular subject out of so many. Today, I opened a new document to make yet another attempt at creativity and inspiration, with perhaps a dash of wit. This is me, trying to write. I

I grew up believing that The United States of America was the greatest country in the world. It felt strong and comforting to me, even as I navigated the rocky terrain of the women’s movement and fought for women’s rights. Thankfully, I did not grow up in a racist home, though, in reality, our neighborhood was white and I did not have much exposure to other cultures or races until I attended high school, then college. But, my parents were intelligent and bestowed me with the