Everything Is Important

How is your heart? 

In recent weeks, mine has felt overwhelmed and paralyzed as a result. I have found myself feeling much like a car sitting at a traffic light in neutral. The light has turned green…

When I look at this picture, my heart feels an abundance of good. Like a massive table and a feast set before me, with candles and everything. It’s too much beauty for the heart to fully hold all…

Last Spring and what feels like a lifetime ago, I wrote about the time I jumped out of the car with wet hair and an outfit I didn’t plan on leaving the car in. You know the one…

It was never part of our plan to move into that house. It sat on the market with little interest for an extended time, an empty shell that mirrored the grief we all felt every time we walked…

I'm feeling all out of sorts today. Maybe it was the funeral and the sadness that looms and the quiet sobs that carry beyond those walls. Perhaps it's the rain and the overcast fall sky. Or the…

It was a hard thing to hear, especially from someone who knows me so well. It's easy for people who aren't close to you to miss the mark in their perception of you. But those who know you…

On more than one occasion, his apartment caught my attention as I drove by and noticed him out front cooking on the grill, surrounded by beautiful sunflowers that towered near the height of the building, a few Bird…

Art exhibit from "The Returning Artist Guild,"
a network of formery incarcerated artists.

Last week I celebrated my thirty-ninth birthday. It was a "spectacular normal," meaning that I didn't do much out of the ordinary, but I've learned…

Several years ago, I almost missed out on one of the best friendships of my life simply because she was different than me. On the day we met, we were handcuffed at the wrist on a bus headed…

I am a writer who connects through words that I am currently struggling to find. 

So here it comes — the hard truth. 

I often write about vulnerability and the power of a story, and even…

Shame has a way of spreading through the soul like mold spreads through a house. Shame is different than guilt. It isn’t just feeling remorse or regret about an event in your life, like when our internal moral…

My phone rang while I scrolled the timeline, trying to avoid the awkwardness of standing elbow to elbow in line at the BMV at two p.m. on a Friday. Her voice was apologetic on the other end, regretting…