Plans have a way of unexpectedly changing when you’re part of a military family
The ability to live in the present is especially important for those of us who are dependents of military members because we have to live our lives in short increments. Our spouses are pretty much property of the U.S. Government, and we can’t really look too far into the future. So I am always starting some new project, volunteer job, or like now, searching for a real, paying job. If you asked where I see myself in five years, I have no idea — where do you see the U.S. Economy in five years?
Photo books, teapots, and stuffed mammoths: a holiday gift round-up for babies, kids, and grown-ups
Just in case the abundance of cheestastic music and colors and that old bearded dude hanging out in the mall hasn’t tipped you off, the holidays are upon us. This means a lot of things, and one of those is that it’s very likely gift-giving season in your neck of the woods.
What I have learned about adoption, family and myself since the death of my birth mother
I am adopted. For me, it’s just normal. It’s not something I’m ashamed of or anything I have ever had a problem with. I’ve always known I was adopted and had quite a few peers and friends who are also adopted so there was no stigma. It was a closed adoption and at the time the identity of the woman who gave me up for adoption was not disclosed. That woman has recently passed away which has led me to look back and consider what it has meant to me to be adopted and look at the relationship we have had.
How are you modeling a grateful life to your children?
There are two words that you’ll probably hear a lot this time of year (especially this week, if you live in the United States): grateful and thankful. The internet is filled with all kinds of artwork and preachy articles extolling you to make sure you’re doing your best to exhibit each both of these qualities — but depending on what is or isn’t going on in your life, they’re not always easy words to live by.
Tips for new parents: augmenting your pre-baby beauty regimes
Today I would like to publicly celebrate an unpredictable effect of that very predictable phenomenon: the way in which my beauty routine did not disappear at all as much as it mutated in strange and wonderful ways. It is now wholly different to what it previously was: it would be unrecognisable, probably, to my pre-parenthood self. But, I venture to assure you, it’s quicker. It’s cheaper. Hell, it might even be better.
I’ve started telling my daughters I’m beautiful
There are a lot of people like me. Women who know things. Women who have seen things. Women with diseases in their livers. There are a lot of women with scars on their arms and words that carry themselves like sparrows. There are women who were too big for this town, who had their backs bent carrying things like religion and a history that originated somewhere in the crook of a branch that extended over a stream. All of you women with lines on your brow, with cracks between your fingers… it’s been a long winter. All of you, you are beautiful and so am I.
Finding freedom in infertility
I got married at eighteen (as a lot of women from my culture do). A husband and two kids by twenty-one was the only path that women I know were ever expected to walk. I, however, shunned the cultural expectation for me to get pregnant. Fast forward three years later and you would find me on an operating table having my lady organs snipped and burned and moved about. For me, infertility means freedom. Beneath the hurt, the fear, the hope and the confusion about why THIS thing happened to me… there is freedom to choose.
A response: why we’re saying yes to a third foster child
On saying no to a second foster child showed up on Offbeat Mama precisely as we were struggling to make a decision on taking an additional foster placement, and I am hoping that we will be able to say the same thing about our decision that I have to say about hers: “I’m glad you did what is right for y’all.”