Hey Reader, Before the menu, I want to stop and say thank you. This has been a season of firsts for me, and you showed up for every one of them. You read the blog. You've come with me to Substack as I build something new there. And when my piece went up on HuffPost, you shared it, you carried it, you handed it to people who needed to see it. I don't take a single one of you for granted. None of this works without the people who actually show up, and you did. You do. So from a very full heart,...
12 days ago • 1 min read
I have something to celebrate, and something to be honest with you about, because you are the people I don't perform for. My piece is live on HuffPost. After everything, after turning down the first opportunity to protect my son, this is the one that ran. I am proud of it. But can I be honest with you? When I started, I was writing for HuffPost Personal. Somewhere along the way I was handed to a different editor, and I didn't find out until it published that my words had landed in Black...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Before the menu, I have something to tell you, and it feels like a testimony. Not long ago I was offered a feature with a national publication. The kind of yes you wait years for. But telling that particular story would have meant putting my son in it in a way I couldn't take back, so after prayer I turned it down to protect his right to change his mind one day. Walking away from something you want is hard. I did it anyway to stay true to my principles and beliefs. Here's what I know now....
19 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, My son was in second grade the first time I understood this could not wait. Not high school. Not even middle school. Second grade. Small enough that his backpack still knocked against the backs of his knees. Old enough, apparently, for a grown-up to pull him aside and ask him to explain himself with no parent in the room. That was the day it stopped being a someday conversation. Here is what I have learned since. Protection does not wait until they are old enough to understand it....
24 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, A little while back I told you about the day my son held the line in a school office. He said the sentence I have been putting in his mouth for years. I need to call my mom. He called. He held. I was so proud I could barely see straight. But there is another story that I hadn't told yet. I have another child, and on a different day, in a hallway between classes, she did not hold. An adult stopped her and started a conversation she was not ready to have alone. She said the thing I...
30 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Football is back. You know what that means. Fall is on the way. The light goes gold a little earlier, the mornings start asking for a hoodie, and the food on the table gets heavier and better. Football season is personal in this house. Let me tell you why. I graduated from Auburn University (WAR EAGLE) for undergrad and pharmacy school. While there I met my husband and somewhere in the middle of pharmacy school, my husband got drafted by the Green Bay Packers. So there I was,...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Every now and then, you get proof that the thing you have been teaching actually took. I got mine in the middle of the day while working. It was a morning of interruptions. The school had already called twice about missing paperwork. The third time I saw the number appear, I tried to step away but missed it. It buzzed again, same number, seconds later. This time I answered, and I heard my son's voice. At the beginning of seventh grade he was cleared to carry his own epinephrine,...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Here is something I learned the hard way, and then could not unsee. When something happens to your child and you say "tell me what happened," you are asking for a skill they may not have yet. Narration is hard. It needs words, and sequence, and enough calm to put them in order. A young child, or any child in a big moment, often does not have all three at once. So they freeze. Or they reach for the wrong words. Or they go quiet, and we read the silence as hiding something, when...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader Sixteen years ago this week, I delivered a baby who wasn't supposed to make it to viability. I came home from that hospital convinced I had to become perfect to deserve her. I spent a lot of years trying. Here's what nobody told me: motherhood is not only a ministry. It's a mirror. Every time I went to fix something in my child, the mirror turned around. The patience I was trying to teach was the patience I'd never given myself. The neurodivergence I was so carefully helping her...
4 months ago • 2 min read