When you look at it in black and white like this, it seems so obvious. Of course we want a home focused on healthy development and relationships! But what happens when focusing on healthy development means over-looking disobedience to get to the root of the problem (like not correcting disrespectful talk BEFORE you come close, physically and emotionally) makes you look and feel like you're letting your children “walk all over you?”
The first time someone wrote to me about the tears that stained their copy of the book, I thought, “Wow, if it can break open just one person like this, then all the stress, all the fear, all the WORK have been truly worth it.”
The last 8 months have required such a weird cocktail of survival mode, denial, hope, and Ecclesiastes that my poor little quivering mass of gray matter has itself divided into so many compartments it could qualify as a bona fide 1980s Caboodle.
Right, ok. I know, it’s just… you know… I just feel so stupid about my anxieties. Why am I always trying to be so special? I’m just a nothing…
If the writing and sharing of The Almost Dancer were the stitches that joined long separated selves back together, that party was the ointment that healed the tender seam.
Quiet, pensive, creative brooding drives me to make work.
The curse is found far, wide, and deep in the world, in me, in every cell.
I pictured a warm, strong, impenetrable blanket or atmosphere of loving approval all around me.
This truth, that denial has no curative power, was all I needed to trust the wisdom of centuries of believers and observe the season of Advent.
That was the year I finally admitted that I do not love Christmas time.
I was thrilled (particularly that Rib had approved the expenditure), and then proceeded to feel for the next three hours that I may vomit.
I'm a middle-aged woman with an embarrassment of riches.
