Prodigal Poet: An Ecclectic Offering on God, Shakespeare, and the Beatles

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Of Passages and Blooms

Today our niece, BryAnna, has had one of her greatest wishes come true . . . she left Riley Hospital without her trach for the first time in her life. For the first time she will breathe through her nose and mouth, rather than a tube inserted into her throat. After 10 years of wishing, hoping and waiting BryAnna can now enjoy what most of us daily take for granted. Bry has endured a couple dozen surgeries in her short time, and done so with an immense amount of sass and spunk. She has Treacher Collins Syndrome. But I hesitate to leave that as such a simple statement, because I don't want her to be defined by her syndrome, by her limitations. She is so much more beyond that. And she has constantly fought to not allow those limitations to control her. Today she won . . . for those of us who are her family and friends, we all won. But today has been preceded by many other days -- some won, some lost, some neither won nor lost, but were the in-between spaces where we j

A Swing Under the Tree

I just read a blog entry on letting go. The author related the need to let go in yoga to letting go in life, instead of fretting and focusing on obvious strength and success. Having participated in the yoga from P90X I can certainly appreciate the literal implications as well as the figurative. You should read it; it's a wonderful post: On Strength and Letting Go . It was a very appropriate read for me today, as I am finding myself getting more and more wound-up and fretful in the last several months. There have been a lot of struggles and stress in my life in the last couple years . . . things I don't necessarily have to expound upon, because frankly, I'm not sure how much it matters. Everyone has their piles of worry. I'm no different. I'm no more special with my grievances than the next person. I have been stretched very thinly, trying to take care of myself, my family, my husband's family, friends, work, and trying to make significant

Super 80's: An Analysis of One Awesome Decade

Our 12 year old niece said something that truly touched my soul one night recently. We were playing a game with her, her 8 year old sister, and their parents (my brother and sister-in-law). It was an 80's version of "Name That Tune." I, being eternally in love and deeply obsessed with all things 80's, was of course more than happy to play a board game that revolved entirely around answering questions about bands with big hair, singers in spandex, and music with enough synthesizing to rock the sweatbands right off of you. Somewhere in the middle of identifying songs from The Pet Shop Boys and reminiscing about how I forgot what Mr. Mister looked like, our niece said to me, "The 80's seems like it was a cool decade to live in." As I wiped a single fallen tear from my cheek I had to refrain from squeezing her like a grandmother hugging a tiny two year old whom had just said, "I love you" for the first time. I couldn't believe tho

The Night Before the Beginning

Tomorrow my niece, Nikole, has her first day of seventh grade. And for her, that means her first day in a new building . . . the high school. She's spending her first day of seventh grade in the exact same building as I spent mine, which makes the nostalgia all the more easy . . . and all the more indigestion-inducing. There is no great revelation here that my time in junior high was, shall we say, unpleasant for the most part. I was a nerd, I had horrible self-esteem, I was "meaty," and I had social anxiety. It doesn't take AP Math to understand that the answer to this equation is bad . . . very, very bad. Starting something new has always been a tremendously difficult chore for me when it comes to things that are nerve-wracking. Every single year I would spend the last week of summer vacation not only being depressed that the break was about to end, but also fretting over homework, impromptu math problems on the chalk board, what to get in the lunch

Self-Esteem, PCOS, and All That Flab: Part 6

* This is part 6 of a series of posts that explore my struggles with self-esteem, weight, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, and the very difficult task of trying to be my fullest self in a world that constantly demands more than what I am. Because this subject is so vast and most of my life has been spent swimming in its waters in some form or another I thought it best to break it up . . . also so as to not bore you to death! Some of you may not be able to relate, but I hope that you will find it interesting anyway. And perhaps you will be better able to understand someone in your life. Some of you may be able to relate and I hope that you will know that you are not the only one -- that the journey may be long, but progress is progress. Remember that no matter how small it may feel, you still are not the same person that you were yesterday. And that is something to celebrate! For Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 please scroll below . . . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Curly Is, As Curly Does

I'm a curly head. It's a little bit scary just how much of my identity, through the course of my life, has revolved around having curly hair. Not only do I associate so much of myself with curly tresses, but others do as well. It makes me easily identifiable in a crowd, especially since I also color my hair a fairly bright red hue. I've never been what you would call, a conventional person. I've never had what you would call, a conventional look. I'm not that eccentric by any means . . . I'm not goth; I'm not a bombshell; I'm not overtly and hip-ly modern. I'm just not the average girl. I look as if there's a real possibility that I was born in the wrong era -- that I would sit more comfortably in the Renaissance or the Medieval periods. I have what many would term as the "classic" look: small, petite features, fair skin, plenty of meat on my bones, and . . . of course, the curly hair. When I was gr