For future reference “The Food Was Hot When I Called” A mother’s memoir

Read More In Stores Never

My dear money pit I still love you, but not like Get it together

Read More Haiku for my House

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for little things. Little things like a freelance gig I absolutely love that I found quickly and I hope will keep me busy for a long while. I can hardly believe my luck. Little things like an HSA account (and money in it!) so that when my mammogram comes back […]

Read More Pennies from Heaven

I believe in Jesus Christ. And when I study His life, His teachings, His parables, and what He taught prophets ancient and modern, it all comes down to this: how we treat each other matters. It’s easy to get distracted by the dumpster fires of the world around us, and to get caught up in […]

Read More A Testimony

What do you do if, as a woman, you realize that the majority of your own life would not pass the Bechdel test? Even over a dozen years after my feminist awakening my lived experience is drastically different than what I would want for any daughter – were I to have had a daughter which […]

Read More The Bechdel Test of Life

More than two decades into adulthood I’m struggling with balance and self compassion and regret and future-making. I’m about halfway through this game of life and I want to throw out all the rules. Worst of all, I’m resentful of the very real reasons I can never do that. It isn’t that I don’t like […]

Read More Write My Way Out

My earliest fasting memory involves praying for the thing I wanted most of all: a My Little Pony DreamscapeSomethingOrOther. I started fasting at age 8. I knew I was to pray for something while I fasted so I prayed for the toy I had seen in commercials that I knew for sure I could never […]

Read More On Fasting (and prayer)

I fully own that I am proud of the way I parented when R and O were young. We had a vibrant and engaging life that stretched us intellectually and socially and kept us really bonded together. I’m glad of that. It made the abject poverty bearable. Once they were both in school it’s a […]

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Here’s a fun story: When I was 14 years old Juneau was not yet a stake. As a district we didn’t have our patriarch, and the nearest one would have been in Anchorage. But one day word came through that a woman from Juneau would be traveling with her father who had come to visit. […]

Read More It’s A Small Mormon World

Congratulations on your graduation! I’m so proud of you. Whatever music looks like for you in the future, I hope you’re able to integrate its lessons into everything else you do. I hope you remember the struggle. Remember how it felt when things didn’t flow. Remember how it felt when you did not love the […]

Read More To My Students, on their graduation