How I Choose to Remember Dad
It’s been 3 months since I pulled into the driveway after a morning of playing tennis. My phone rang just as I put the car in park. My brother Jon was on the other end of the line. “Hi”, he said, “there’s no easy way to say this so I’ll just get right to it.…
The Life of a Relationship
We’re going to have a wedding! My oldest daughter and her boyfriend got engaged on Friday. When Matt called us a month ago to let us know he was going to propose, I cried. “She’s the one” he told us. I was sworn to secrecy and its officially been the longest month of my life.…
Letting Go of the Leash, Part 2
I had no intention of a “Part 2” to the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago, until I visited Mom again, kind of spur of the moment, a few days ago. As explained, visiting Mom means walking Lola, her Golden Doodle. I had this amazing experience on the final day of my last…
Hawaiian Shirt Day
I was on the phone with my oldest daughter on the evening of her birthday shortly after we had moved into a new (to us) home. It was a very exciting time. It’s a long story, but this was OUR home, as in, we now had our OWN mortgage. I have never been so happy…
Letting Go of the Leash
My mom owns a Golden-Doodle named Lola. Lola and I have a rocky relationship. To begin with, I’ll be honest, I’m not crazy about dogs and also, because my mom bought Lola about a week before she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I associate her existence with that painful time. Many of us in the…
Windshields, Bugs, and Opposition
One of my favorite singer/songwriters is Mary Chapin Carpenter. I’ve been hooked since her 1992 hit “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her”. There’s always a line or two in each of her songs that makes me either laugh or cry. The lines in that song that always made me cry: “For 15 years she had a…
Invitation Declined.
I was 12 years old, in 6th grade at Roosevelt Elementary School in SLC, UT. I had recently started “going with” Robby. He was gorgeous. I do not remember his last name, but I do remember he had hair like Shawn Cassidy. On a Sunday morning not long after our relationship began, I got a…
What Do I Have to Offer?
There are a lot of things I’ve never done, never even dreamt of doing, until a year ago. Never dreamt of being an entrepreneur , in fact I knew that’s what I didn’t want to be. I never dreamt of becoming a Life Coach. I’d never even heard of life coaching until a good friend…
She Is My Only Mother
When I was is in my teens and early 20s and I didn’t feel like I was getting the attention I deserved from my mom, I would say to myself, “After all, I am her only daughter she should _____________” And I had many ideas of what she should be doing. Taking me to lunch,…