A previous version of the following piece was originally published in The Fresno Bee on January 4, 2020. Hello 2020! I tend to start each new year with new goals for self care, a personal mental checklist if you will. Call it a habit of analyzing what the previous year brought, what it didn’t bring,…
focused+fit
October Hauntings: Ghosts, grief & guts to get up.
Everyone has their own month — a month that haunts us, that reminds us of the dark, that sneaks up and tries to scare us when we let our guard down for a second. Mine is October — but not because of Halloween. October now delivers me ghosts. October is now an annual, tumultuous reset…
Dear Daughter, We Are Officially Halfway. (And here’s what I see…)
Dear Daughter, I’m not sure how or why we got here so fast. Halfway, they say. Halfway to 18, halfway to college. Halfway until you are gone from this home as a child. NINE. Nine years of you. Nine years of a reinvented me (being mommy). Nine years of love and life and laughing —…
Back to School & Busy Schedules: OUR fault.
A previous version of this piece was published in The Fresno Bee on March 8, 2019. Funny how September swoops in and shocks the hell out of us all every single year. Well, me anyway. I look at my calendar this month (and for the next few months) and suddenly want to crawl in bed…
When working with your spouse is… HARD.
A previous version of this piece was originally published in The Fresno Bee on June 6, 2019. Reinventing and evolving our identities as moms, wives and women can be hard. When my most recent (and most recently-beloved) TV job ended last year, I floundered. That was the job for me at this phase in my…
Mother’s Day: Do YOU.
A previous version of this piece was originally published in The Fresno Bee on May 10, 2019. If you Google ‘history of Mother’s Day’ you might find some fun facts: The very first celebration was launched at a church in 1908 by a woman named Anna Jarvis, who never married or became a mother. Anna…
Skipping Resolutions, Honoring Realizations.
A version of the following post was previously printed in The Fresno Bee on Saturday January 5, 2019, as part of the monthly ‘FAB Mom’ family lifestyle column. Hi, 2019. (Insert horn-blowing here.) Since becoming a parent almost nine years ago, each January has found me feeling less like my old young self. Some years…
