Slower than the Average Bear
Dear Diary, I was sixteen and in the best shape of my life when my basketball coach nonchalantly said, “You’d be so much faster if you just lost 20 pounds.” What should you never, ever say to a sixteen-year-old girl? Those 11 words. Let’s be clear: I was a 3-sport athlete when I was sixteen. […]
A Pain Story
Dear Diary, My sweet mom lived with chronic pain. She was diagnosed with MS in her 50s and with neuropathy shortly thereafter. She wasn’t easily sidelined, my fierce and fabulous mother, but there were days she just couldn’t get out of bed. “My bad days,” she called them. “If you’re going to be in pain, […]
Enough
In recognition of National Eating Disorders Awareness week… * * * My relationship with food and with my body is complicated, slippery, broken. My ability to deal with it from a place of reason and intellect waxes and wanes. No matter how it may or may not manifest itself, I will always have an eating […]
Big
Two weeks ago, I lost nine pounds. Last week, I gained eight of them back. This is not a new story in my anthology. I have always been Oprah-esque in my ability to lose and gain, to rinse and repeat. So are many of you. I know that from the emails I receive, the private […]
The Business of Being Human
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon. Sure, I love her words and her wit and her candor, but I wasn’t going to gush about it and fall all over myself and sing her praises. Why? I don’t know. Pride? Envy? Probably both. Probably, shamefully, more of the […]
Parenting’s Second Half
We’re in the second half of parenting. All of our kids are double-digits, a couple of them already well into the teenage years. Next month, my youngest will be double-same-digits. (That particular term is derived from a bit of lore in our house… When Sam was turning 11, I said to him, “Aren’t you excited?! You’re […]
Teenager Two
Today, I have two of them. Teenagers, that is. In seventeen short months, Teenager Number Three will make her debut, and we’ll no longer have anyone in single digits. How in the world did that happen? “Um, we’re growing up, Mom,” Mary Claire explained with her classic eye-roll. “It happens.” Augustus Charles hit the big […]
Adaptation
Ten short months ago, we received word that Mississippi State University wanted Chris. (Cue the Billy Squier music.) Ten short months ago, we broke the news to the kids. Sam and Gus smiled nervously and nodded their tentative approval, George bit back tears, Mary Claire exploded into full-on, body-thrashing, vitriol-spewing anger. “Nooooooooo!!!!” she screamed as […]