Every single finals week for the past five years, Celaya, an already emotional child, becomes high strung and irrational. Her eyes well up with tears, her voice begins to crack, and her head will hang down at the unlikeliest of slights. I know quite well that I am raising an empath. I have seen her…
Category: Life
My Friends Are My Mirrors: A Village Revealed
I slammed the sharp side of a knife into the side of my thumb today, alone with my daughters, right before nap time. And I faint at the sight of my own blood running from my own wound. Fortunately, I have a rock solid village. I have found that when I am in trouble, regardless…
Energy Never Dies: Passion Provides
I can come home, as I did last night, after an eleven hour shift of standing on my feet and talking to kids about history and government, and write a thousand word essay. I can finish an eleven hour shift for the second day in a row, as I did tonight, still full of energy,…
Truth Teller: Wake Up and Shake Up
A solid educational system should include teaching kids critical thinking skills. Educated kids should be challenging authority. Well educated kids would question everything. Everything. Well educated kids would be pissed, furious at what the grown ups in the room are doing to the country they will inherit. Part of my mission in life, in my…
Family Friendly?: Christmas, Kids, and Cusswords
Warning: “bad” language ahead. “Fuck!” I said, starting to get irritated. “Goddamn it.” My five year old said, sitting on the counter and watching me. Yea, we definitely could not be featured on the family friendly television channels. I burst out laughing, all irritation vanished, and I remembered this was supposed to be fun. We…
Fixing Broken Things: Together We Can
Everything is easier together. The only reason I got through my childhood is that I had my brother and sisters, younger siblings to be strong for. The reason my marriage has worked for ten years with no major bumps or bruises is that my husband and I both want it to work. My tutoring center…
Halfway Through Crazy: Stop to Rest
I have taken on this 25 days of writing challenge called “blogmas.” I am now halfway through crazy (Trust me. Crazy.) So I took a day to stop and rest. Blogmas One of the Facebook blogging groups I am in introduced me to this idea of blogging every day in December, ideally with a Christmas…
Follow Unfollow: Everything That’s Wrong With Business Today
A trend on Instagram as a way to maximize followers is to find accounts similar to yours, with hashtags similar to yours, and follow them. Typically, the person sees you have followed him or her, looks at your account, likes it, and follows you back. Now you have gained a new follower. Sometimes you wait…
Hubris and Humility: Save Me From Myself
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Quite often, in an effort to help, we end up hurting. Hubris and humility are the two sides of the road we find ourselves on when we are seeking to change the world. A few years ago, France passed a law banning women from wearing the hijab. The liberal, liberated…
Intentional Living: Who Are You?
“Intentional Living” is one of the big buzz terms everywhere in the world of self improvement. Who are you? The goal of intentional living is to get you to answer that question and then live accordingly. We are what we do. We are what we say. And we are what we think. So decide who…