A few months ago, a good friend of mine asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I was thrilled. Then talk of the Bachelorette Party started. A trip to Vegas. I am not a big gambler, and I don’t frequent strip clubs. I have an aversion to crowds and bright lights. I also hate spending money. And leaving my house unless absolutely necessary. And I like sleep. In my own bed. Vegas is not my place. My friend knows this, and she gave me an out. She told me she knows money is tight and I have my kids so if I don’t want to go, no hard feelings. I do hate Vegas. But I hate being left out even more. And I love my friend.

So I went. On the road trip. With 13 people (combined bachelor/bachelorette party), most of whom I knew casually, or not at all. My first trip sans kids in about three years. It was a blast. Yes the lights were a lot. And the late nights. And the very very long drive. But I made great connections and I don’t regret a second of it. I saw Paula Abdul!

Rachel and Lilly stayed at my house alone while I was gone. They took care of the garden and the animals. Their dad was unsure. He was worried they would have parties and boys and all the things you see in teen movies from the 90’s. I wasn’t worried about any of that. My girls are responsible, reliable.

Emmy decided to stay home from school the day after I got back. And as I had taken the day off from work to recover, I did not object. I planned on getting the house in order, and then spending the day on the yard.

My plans were thwarted by a bird. When I went to water the backyard, I found a dead dove in the grass. I learned a lot about myself from the events that transpired after that. I view myself as a strong, independent woman. But the idea of touching, much less disposing of a dead bird made me squeamish. I also view myself as straightforward and honest. However, I had every intention of manipulating my 14-year-old son into taking care of the dead bird when he got home from school. I figured I would play the sad sappy woman who needed the man of the house to take care of a problem card. Crisis averted… Then the dead bird started to flap its wings.

I love all living things. Like most people, I hate to see anything or anyone suffer. But I had every intention of letting Penny outside to take care of the dove problem. Had Emmy not been there, I may have done just that. She insisted we rescue it. I have gone through this before with Lilly, so I knew the only bird sanctuary was miles and miles away. And a trip to the bird sanctuary did not fit into my post-vacation plans. But even if I am not the good person I thought I was, I love Emmy desperately. Rescuing the bird was important to her. We found a shoe box. She researched what birds eat and lined the box with slices of apple and a rolly-polly she found outside. Along with an old hand towel I was ok parting with. After some hesitation, I put my big girl panties on and picked up the damaged bird with gloved hands and put it in the shoe box. And we drove it to the sanctuary. Across town. In five o’clock traffic. On the way she named the bird. Sam, as we did not know the gender. She also gave it a birthday. May 24th if anyone is interested.

Rachel looked rough when I got back from my trip. She is 17. And she suffers from anxiety and depression. I took one look at her the night I got home and I knew she was not alright. She looked dark and burdened. She said she was fine. But also said “sometimes I wonder what the point is.” These are not the words you want to hear your child say. I was gutted. Outside of the bird incident, I spent Monday on the phone with her doctor and her nurse and her counselor, and anyone else who would listen. She is fine now. She says I overreacted. Maybe. I told her I will overreact every single time. I just cannot lose her.

In theory, Rachel and Lilly took care of everything while I was gone. But it was mostly Lilly. My precious, sweet, open, mature beyond her years Lilly. When I got home, we chatted for a bit, then I told her I needed to go outside to check the yard. I invited her to come along and she said “Oh good! I thought you didn’t want to talk to me anymore.” Never never ever do I not want to talk to this child. But she is a child. I forget that sometimes. She takes so much responsibility on, and with such a good attitude, that I forget sometimes that she is just a kid. And without going into detail, she is dealing with her own heavy problems.

Carson. Carson Carson Carson. I try really hard not to share anything on these posts that my kids would not want me to. So let me just say that Carson was the straw that broke the camel’s back this week. He has been phenomenally sweet and kind and helpful these past few months. His grades are up. His teachers love him. He found a great group of friends. Fourteen has been his year! He has been an absolute joy to be with. I knew in my soul that there were things going on with him that I would not like. And I got confirmation of that. In the middle of Emmy’s end of school music concert. I cried. I sobbed. Not because it was any great surprise. Or even anything very terrible. It was just one thing too many.

Often, I will run into friends or acquaintances who will ask me how my kids are doing. My answer is always the same. “They are great”. It is a genuine answer, and I beam when I give it. They are great. They are fun and interesting, and flawed. And they love me and love to be with me. They are making relatively good choices. No drugs, no sex. They tell me everything. Even when I wish they wouldn’t. In spite of this, I have always carried some worry that this will not always be the case. But it has been a subjective worry. This week, for the first time in their teenage existence, I have worried that they might not be ok. And that I may have messed the parenting thing up. I am not perfect, and I have never thought I was. My kids will have plenty to tell their therapist when they grow up. I always figured that the fierceness with which I love them will make up for any mistakes I make. But this week has been the first week I truly have doubted that theory. About all of them. Except Emmy, but only because she is so young. I will take all the doves to all the bird sanctuaries if it means I can avoid the tragedy that is the teenage years.

This past week has been my kid week. Every single one of them has stayed close to home. They have been borderline needy. They went to their dad’s this evening. Part of me was relieved. Part of me needs the space for a second. But a bigger part of me wants them home. I want to watch the jumprope routines, and to play HORSE, and to chit chat. And rewatch all the Star Wars movies just because Carson wants to. If they are with me, maybe they will be ok.

My parents just left for Scotland for a couple of weeks, and I hate it. My safety net is gone when they are not home. I am over 40 years old. Independent and self-assured. But sometimes I just need my mom. I am unsettled when she isn’t close by.

I took my mom to lunch in the midst of my bad week. I asked her if she had the space to listen to me for a minute. I wanted to unload, without dialogue. I vomited everything I was feeling. My worries about my kids, all the ways I am sure I am failing. She listened. She cried with me. She offered no advice. But she did say a couple of important things. First, that you never stop worrying about your kids. And second, that although parenting is hard, it is also a privilege to be with these kids when they are going through all the pain being a person brings (I am super paraphrasing). She also told me I am doing a great job. I don’t know if I believe her, but boy am I trying. And boy did it help, having my mommy there when I needed her.

My girls did not party while I was gone. They had no boys over. They were responsible and pretty great. Carson and Emmy were with their dad. They are used to it. They love him. He takes care of all their needs and wants. But what I learned from being gone for the four days in Vegas is this. My kids need me. When I am not here, life is unsettled.

Vegas was fun. But it is my last trip without my kids for a while. This is where I need to be. It is where I want to be.

My parents are go getters. It is a quality in them that I love. Their own upbringings were not necessarily ideal, but they both come from long lines of hard workers. And it is a quality they have tried to instill in all six of their children. I deeply resented this as a young person. As an adolescent, on Saturday mornings the only thing I wanted to do in the whole world was to sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep. And maybe watch Saturday morning cartoons. But my mom figured if she was up and working, we all should be as well. She had red laminated cards with various chores listed on them. She would turn them upside-down and place coins on top. Nickels and dimes, and if it was a particularly difficult chore, quarters. We would take turns picking a card. Once the chore listed was completed to her satisfaction, we got to keep the change. This was 25 plus years ago, but even considering inflation, no matter what card we picked, we were not making much. The chores were going to be done anyway. So I guess we figured we might as well get what we could.

Like everyone, in my teenage years I vacillated between career ideas. The one I landed in at the time was teaching. I had some pretty amazing teachers in my youth. And some pretty unmemorable ones. But the ones who were great made a difference to me. I wanted to do that for other young people. I wanted to be a Mr Jones (5th grade, and a true inspiration), a Dr Mooney (sophomore English, gave me a love of reading and accepted no nonsense), a Ms Daley (8th grade English but also so much more), a Mr Sandmeyer (Government, and one of the few teachers I still keep in touch with. Made me think about the world I was living in), a Dr Kinney (Mr Neckbeard, and the reason I got my degree in psychology) a Mr. Clements (senior government, and an all around inspiration).

By the time I was 12, I was paying for most of my “fun money”. Clothes, movies, food. I had a small allowance, but I supplemented that with babysitting. Which I was good at, but kind of hated. Sometimes I worked for my dad at his concrete supply company, but my first official job happened when I was 16. I worked at a European bakery making $5.50 an hour. Which I thought was pretty great since it was just over minimum wage. I mostly manned the cash register, and counted the tills at the end of the night. It was a pretty easy gig. Everything was made fresh daily, so anything left over at the end of the night was ours to take or eat or whatever. I am pretty sure I gained a small child while I worked there. I was an ok employee. I showed up mostly on time. I did my job adequately. In my year of working there, I only missed one shift. And when I did, I thought I would die from shame. The manager was an older English lady, and when I did finally show up for the missed shift she was understandably put out. Her husband was there too. He told me “don’t worry Katie. You are as good as gold kid.” I am not sure why that meant so much to me, but it did. There were times I had to open the bakery on Saturday mornings at 6am. Being a teenager, I always pushed the time a little bit. One morning, as I was running late, I illegally passed a particularly slow driver in an attempt to beat the clock. On a two-lane street. Where the speed limit was 35 at most. Turns out that slow car was our morning delivery driver, a crusty and grumpy and lovely man in his 60’s. I arrived to the bakery in just enough time, with him shortly on my heels. He walked into the bakery and screamed “I am MAD at you!” I shrank back and said “what did I do?” He said “You passed me this morning. That was very dangerous. Don’t do that again!” I didn’t.

That job eventually fell by the wayside. When I went to college, it was in a small town where jobs were hard to come by. I was lucky enough to land a job at the local Hogi Yogi. I am pretty sure this company has gone under. But for those of you who don’t know, Hogi Yogi was a chain were you could order a custom sandwich and/or a frozen yogurt blended with whatever toppings you so desired. The job was fine. It didn’t pay much. But the food! Once again, I gained quite a bit of weight working there. I quit after my one year review. In which I was told I was a stellar employee. And subsequently received a 10 cent raise per hour.

My next job was as a server at a local Italian restaurant in Boise. It was the perfect job at the time. I made enough money working part-time to pay my rent ($275 a month) and all my bills. And I still had enough time to attend my college classes and maintain a social life. It was so fun. But my god that job was hard. I maintain to this day that every human should have to work in the service industry just once, so they can see how hard it is. You deal with abuse and demands that would make any grown person cry. And cry we did. I worked with a server who would predictably end up in the walk-in fridge on any given weekend night. She would cry out something like “I-cannot-do-this-anymore!” Another server that I loved and admired would talk her down. She would say “It’s ok. It’s gonna be ok. It’s not cancer. It’s just pasta. Nobody is going to die.” This has been my mantra as an adult when things get hard. It’s all ok. Nobody is going to die. It is just pasta. My years as a server have helped me to be empathetic to others in the trade. I am an excellent tipper. And have taught my family to be the same (my dad will regularly throw a $100 bill a server’s way). I will give a server a 20% tip just for showing up to the table. More if they are any good at all. You should all do the same. As a former server, I understand that an extra dollar or two might not help you pay the bills, but it sure makes the night easier to bear.

I graduated with a BS in psychology. I loved my major. I loved my classes. I loved everything I learned. By the time I graduated I was tired of school. I had just gotten married, and I wanted a break. I wanted time to be a newlywed. I wanted time to decide where to go next. I knew that I needed to get my Masters at least if I wanted to do anything with my degree. But I was of the mindset that I had plenty of time. Time is slippery. I never did go back to school. But I did learn pretty quick that having a bachelors in Psychology was not much better than having a high school diploma when it came to finding work…

Considering my life-long obsession with my weight and size, it’s no wonder that I landed on personal training and physical fitness as a career. I worked as a personal trainer at Gold’s Gym in North Carolina just before I had kids, and then dabbled in the personal training field for years while I was having and raising them.

My favorite job of all-time was working as a group fitness instructor and administrator at a start-up boutique gym. The gym focused on high intensity training that incorporated weight-lifting. I loved it. I loved the community. And I loved my boss. He and I had a lot in common. Because of this, and because we were both talkers, we were not as productive as we could have been. There were many conversations that started with “ok I will tell you this last thing and then we need to get back to work.” While I loved the job, it was not exactly lucrative. I was going through a divorce, and for the first time in 12 years, I had to consider supporting my four children.

When my oldest was born, her dad and I made the decision that I would be a stay-at-home mom. My earning potential as a personal trainer wasn’t great, and it made financial sense for me to stay at home and raise our children, as opposed to spending my entire income on childcare. I do not regret this decision. Being at home with my kids was a profoundly wonderful experience. I miss it every day. I wish I could still be a stay-at-home-mom. It is my ideal career. But staying at home with my kids made for a pretty sparse resume when it came to finding a job that would support me and my four children. I had resigned myself to my role as fitness guru. And I was determined to invest my time and energy into the small gym I had landed in. I was sure it would work out.

While I was working at the gym one day, I got a phone call from an old acquaintance. My ex husband and I knew him and his wife from our younger married years. He was looking for an administrative head for his growing transportation compliance company, and thought I would be a good fit. The salary he was offering seemed obscene at the time. And the answer to all my prayers. I had to at least take the interview. The job was vague and scary, but the amount of money, the amount of security he was offering, was something I could not pass up. I left my comfort zone, and accepted the job. It broke my heart to leave my gym, my people. There are still moments I regret my decision.

I had no idea what I was doing when I took the new job. My new boss warned me that I wouldn’t. There was no training, no real job description. It took me an entire year to understand what I had gotten myself into. And I spent a good portion of that year feeling like a fraud. In the beginning, I would think “they are going to find out. They are going to know you don’t know what you are doing”. That job was hard. And in retrospect I can confidently say I did it great. I figured out what I needed to do. I learned. I put my heart and my soul into it.

It was a great job. My boss was kind and empathetic. The women I worked over were amazing. But it was demanding. There was very little flexibility for kids’ doctors appointments, school performances, gymnastic practices. I had to hire someone to get my kids off to school on the weeks I had them. Their dad was understandably getting frustrated with my lack of availability. He had been working at his own career for years (while I was home with the kids). He had the flexibility. He told me one day “I still have to work!” That’s when I knew things had to change. For my kids, they had to change.

In 2021, I made the hard decision to leave my secure job and take on a local candy company with my dad. It was an established and well-known candy company making a moderately decent profit. It seemed like an easy gig. When I finally decided to commit to leaving my current job, I tried and tried to arrange a meeting with my boss to give him my notice. But between Covid restrictions and his busy schedule, it did not end up happening. So I told him by phone. I gave a month’s notice. Then, feeling like I had let him down, I asked him if he was mad. He said “Katie, I am never going to be upset with an employee for quitting so they can find something better.” I have taken that reaction with me. And used it with my own employees.

That job was hard. So hard. But I learned a lot. And I will be forever grateful to the man who gave me the opportunity to do a job I was not, on paper, qualified to do. I like to think I stepped up to the plate. I like to think I made a difference in the role he hired me for. I hope he feels the same.

Running my own business is not easier. In some ways it is much harder. I am always on the clock. Even if I am not there. The candy store is always on my mind. The success or failure of my business is on me. If we don’t make money, I cannot pay my employees. I cannot continue to provide a service to my wonderful customers. A service that in a small way, makes their lives a little better. I cannot support my children. My family. My life. It is a heavy load that I feel all the time.

Shortly after I took over the store, my manager at the time tried to give me advice on how to run the store. She was a bit older than me, and had played a more “motherly” role in our encounters when I was in my teens. We had gone to church together for years. I went to school with some of her kids. I can see why she felt the need to butt in. Her advice consisted of “open your mail every day, I will help you get organized, and if you haven’t finished your tasks, you have to stay until they are done. That is just what it is.” I told her very frankly that I had no interest in having this conversation with her. This manager no longer works for me. Her leaving was a mutual decision. Watching us come in and make changes to the candy store she had put so much of her life into (no matter how minor) proved too difficult. I understood. I still have a lot of affection for her. I would like to think she has the same for me. But my position about my business is and always will be, that the business can burn to the ground if my kids need me. And the business can burn to the ground if my employees’ kids need them. At the end of the day, it’s just a job. A means to live life. For me. For my employees with kids, for my employees without kids.

As a kid, my room was always chaos. Garbage shoved under my bed, in my closet, anywhere I could hide it. There were scraps of paper, laundry washed and rewashed (because who knew if they were clean or not?). I was very content with doing the bare minimum. Not just with my room, but with my life. Homework, dance classes, whatever. My mom told me once that she worried how I would do as an adult, based on my ability to keep my room clean. Understandable. But I am fine. I am a hard worker. A very hard worker. Things are still chaotic and messy. That is just who I am. But I get up on Saturday mornings. I have my coffee. And then I get to work.

My career path has not been what I thought. Life has not been what I thought. Whose life has? I know very few people who are on the career path they chose when they were 18. I am not a teacher or a psychologist, or a personal trainer. I own a candy store of all things. And I work hard at it. As I would any other job. It will work out. It will be fine. But if it’s not, that will be ok too. Whatever job I end up with, I will do it to the best of my ability… as long as it means I can be there for my kids.

Hopefully my kids will take my example, and the example of my parents and their parents, in their own lives. Most of them live with scraps of paper on their floors, laundry that might be clean or dirty. Their grades are average at best. We don’t have laminated cards with chores. But I still insist they help. And they hate it.

Rachel has a job. She has been very sick for the past week. She has missed school, but she has gone to work every single day she has been scheduled. She has suffered through. Her room might be a mess. Her grades may be sub-par. She may resist family work days. But when it comes to her working world, she is stellar. I did that. My mom and dad did that. Their parents did that. Her life will probably follow a different trajectory than she thinks right now. Whatever she decides to do, she will be great. They all will.

My mom is a great mom. Not a perfect mom, but much much better than average. Growing up she was loving and attentive. She served us home-cooked healthy meals. She attended our sporting events, our plays, anything that was important to us. With all six kids. She still does. Her and my dad try and make it to as many sporting events for their grandchildren that they can. And there are a lot of grandkids. I mean, more than 20 easily. They came to a Friday night baseball game for Carson the other day. Impressive, since I barely wanted to spend my Friday night there.

My mother’s upbringing was unstable at best. She tells us often that she had no intention of having kids of her own at all. She was serious about it. But from the second she had my sister Summer, she was determined to do it right. She intentionally tried to bypass all the mistakes her own parents made. In my opinion she was incredibly successful on this front.

Mother’s Day is always on Sunday. Which means that on Mother’s Day growing up for me, there was always church. In my memory, my mom left in the middle of every single Mother’s Day sacrament meeting (much like mass for those of you who don’t know) in tears. My mom is not a crier. My mom is stoic and tough as nails. I didn’t understand why she kept leaving at the time, but I do now. The talks (much like sermons for those of you who don’t know) primarily focused on all the ways the speaker’s mom was amazing. I remember a specific talk a woman gave about how her mom would put her school clothes on the heater vent so they would be nice and warm when she got ready for the day. I thought at the time, and still think, this is a beautiful act of love. But all my mom heard was “I am not doing enough”. She promptly got up and left the room.

My mom did a lot of heater-vent type things to make us feel loved. She baked home-made bread, cooked home-cooked meals. She cuddled us, she did anything we needed her to do. In fifth grade I called her crying because I forgot my glasses. I didn’t really need them. My eyesight was pretty decent. I am not sure why I made a big deal about it. She knew this. And probably knew I just needed to know she cared. She took time out of her day and brought them to me. The most important thing my mom did for me though was listen. She listened to me talk about my day, my drama, my friends.

I was always so surprised when she knew specific details about my life. About who was mad at who, and who had a crush on this boy or that. I would gasp and say “how did you know that??” It wasn’t until I was a teenager that she revealed that the reason she knew so much is because I would tell her… and then forget. She found it amusing.

I have always amused my mother with my chit chat. She seemed to find joy in the things I would say. And in turn, growing up I thought she hung the moon. There was never a moment that I was embarrassed by her presence. I was proud to show her off to my friends. And I repeated her wisdom to anyone who would listen. If my mom said it, it was gospel.

They say all kids go through the phase of “cutting apron strings”. Kids need to differentiate themselves from their parents. They need to create their own identity. They need to test their independence. As the third of six children, I witnessed my older sisters going through this with my parents (my mom). And it wasn’t pretty. For both sisters, it happened early in high school. My mom tells me she was convinced I was going to bypass the whole thing. Because up until my senior year I was still sure she could do no wrong. What a rude awakening for both of us the day I realized my mom was a human person.

School did not come easily for me. My grades were average at best. And after talking it over with my mom, I decided college was not for me. Part way through my senior year, she changed her tune, and convinced me to apply to a private college a few hours from my home town. I got in, by the skin of my teeth. She told me years later that she just needed me out of the house. I had become a real pill.

Like I said, my mom is one tough cookie. It takes a lot to make her cry. But I did it my senior year. A lot. I clearly remember my sister Merry getting me out of bed early on a Sunday morning, telling me mom wanted me to come down and help her in the kitchen. It might have been my dad’s birthday? I had a bad time the night before. I had faced some rejection from a boy I liked, and I was in a mood. My mom tried to make conversation. She asked me about my night. I gave her rude one-word answers. Eventually she broke. She threw a glass in the sink. It shattered. And it scared me. She screamed at me “you would treat a stranger on the street better than you treat me!” She was right. I would. I apologized. I tried to hug her. I told her I had a bad night. But the damage was done. I broke her heart.

Eventually we got past this phase. I am close to my mom. And in a lot of ways, I still think she hung the moon. But that is evened out with my understanding that she is a fallible human being.

My teenagers have been pretty good to me. They are not perfect. But they talk to me. They seem to like and respect me. I give them a lot of space while simultaneously trying to stay close. We are good. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the cutting of apron strings. I deserve it. But so far so good.

I am like every mother that ever existed. I worry constantly that I am doing it wrong. That I am ruining them. That I will be the reason they need therapy for the rest of their lives. I do not attend sacrament meeting anymore, but I am sure that if I did, I would leave each Mother’s Day meeting in tears.

I didn’t give much thought to whether or not I would have kids. Because of my upbringing and the culture I identified with at the time, it was just expected. You got married. You had kids. You made them your world. I got married at 22. Had my first child at 25, and intentionally had three more by the time I was 30. It was chaos. I cannot express this enough. They are all approaching adulthood now, and it is still chaos. But so so fun. My world view has changed a lot since I started having kids. Knowing what I know now, I think I would still have had them. Every last one. I guess I was lucky. Having kids was what I truly wanted, expectations aside. And I was lucky enough to have the choice.

But let’s take a second to recognize all of the women in our world who don’t have kids. I know a lot of them. Some who chose not to have kids, and some who would like to have, but never got the opportunity. This is a hard place to be, both culturally and biologically.

A woman I know mentioned that she thought she was going through menopause. She is in her 50’s. She doesn’t have any kids. I didn’t think much about it at the time. It’ part of life right? All of us ladies will have to deal with it eventually. She got the confirmation from her doctor that she was indeed going through menopause. When she told me, she burst into tears. She said something like “you know, they tell you you have all this time. That you have plenty of opportunity later, but that’s not true”. It was a heartbreaking moment.

Is she less of a woman because she did not fulfill her “divine” role as mother? Does her life mean less because she does not have children?

Having children is a blessing and a privilege. But it is not the sole purpose of a woman’s existence. The women in my world who have chosen not to have kids, or have not had the opportunity are valuable women. Beautiful women. Innately wonderful just as they are. This particular woman is very kind to my kids. She is important to them. Without her, I could not raise my children as effectively as I am.

When I was in high school, my dad was called to be the bishop (much like a pastor for those of you who don’t know). He put the kibosh on the whole “my mom was so great” sacrament meeting talks. He was tired of watching his cherished wife, and mother of his children, leave the room in tears. And he understood that she was most likely not the only woman who struggled through the Mother’s Day talks. If my amazing loving kind mother left sacrament meeting feeling low, how did all the non-mothers in the congregation feel? Go dad.

Mother’s Day is approaching, and here is my appeal. If you are a mother, doing your best work to raise your kids with love and patience, give yourself a break. You are doing just fine. If you are a woman without kids for whatever reason, you are valuable and wonderful as you are. And you are playing a key role in raising the children in your community. Keep loving those kids. They deserve it. They didn’t ask to be here. We brought them here. So for mothers and non-mothers alike, just love them. It is all they need. Everything else is just gravy.

I had exactly two parenting fails today. Both involving Rachel. She called me from school, after experiencing a “traumatic” event. Apparently someone passed out during PE, and Rachel was on the front lines. She felt the need to go home after this. When she called to tell me about it I said something like, “Well you didn’t pass out, so why do you need to go home?” She hung up on me. When I called her back she said something like, “this was really scary, and you are the first person I called because I thought you would understand.” Ouch. It turns out she was the one who found the convulsing girl. The first on the scene. She had to run and get a defibrillator and then stand by. She had to watch as the paramedics rushed the scene. The girl who passed out is ok. Rachel is not. She said it brought back a lot of feelings she was having when her friend died earlier in the year. Which totally makes sense. I missed the significance on the first go around.

When I was growing up, if I had any ailment from a fever to a broken heart, my mom’s prescription was to drink a glass of water and go for a walk. There was no room for dramatics with my mother. You felt things, you dealt with it, you moved on. Nothing was urgent. Nothing was life-threatening. Nothing was worth getting mad or sad about. I wonder if this was a result of having a lot of kids in a very short period of time. Or maybe a result of her own relatively traumatic upbringing. Nearly all of my childhood discomforts were truly nothing serious, so she probably most likely knew what she was doing. My mom was caring. My mom was affectionate. She tucked me in every night when I was young. She asked me about my day. She listened to my endless chatter about this or that. She cared about me and my siblings. There was not one moment in my entire upbringing that I did not feel loved. But she had no patience for dramatics. And I learned quickly to swallow down all the drama.

A few months back, my ex-husband and I took Carson and Emmy to California for Emmy’s gymnastics competition. We left Rachel and Lilly at home to fend for themselves. They insisted they would be fine for the two days. They are both teenagers. They are good teenagers. Perfectly capable of handling themselves for a couple of days. I had absolutely no fear of parties or boys or drugs. My only real concern was school. Lilly would make it to her classes no problem. But Rachel has a tendency to find a reason not to go to school. A headache, a stomachache, a hard time sleeping the night before. That girl will do anything to get out of going. Without either parent home to cajole her, I was pretty sure she would find a way to skip. Sure enough, Sunday night she called us with a sob story about how sick she was. She was convinced she had Covid. We were coming home the next day. I told her she had two choices. She could go to school, and if she ended up having Covid, I would give her $50. Or she could stay home. If she ended up not having Covid, she would owe me $50. She went to school. And ended up calling my dad to bring her home. I gave her the promised Covid test when we got home. It was positive. Oops. She has of course, not let me live this down. Maybe I should have given my little wolf-cryer the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I should not have taken the drink some water and go for a walk approach. Who is to know?

A classmate of mine died my sophomore year of high school. She was skiing in Utah, and on the way back to Boise, her dad hit some black ice. He walked away unscathed. She was partially ejected from the car and died on the scene. This was their only child. It devastated them. I was not close to her or her family. But her death rocked my world. The next few months were the closest to clinical depression I have ever come. I cried a lot. I felt empty and unhappy. I brought it up. I asked for help. At the time I felt dismissed. But I did move past it, so I don’t know.

Rachel lost someone she was actually close to. She is still reeling. Am I to take the “be tough as nails” approach and hand her a glass of water? Or does she need more? I DON’T KNOW. If you know, help a girl out.

My second parenting fail came the night of the girl passing out incident. The kids were with their dad. I saw them all briefly after school, before they headed to his house. I gave Rachel a hug and sat with her for a few minutes. Rachel is depressed. Or dealing with depression and anxiety (she has given me permission to write about this). One of the features of her depression is a difficulty with self-care. She has a hard time eating, moving, showering. When she does eat, it’s not great food. The other day at 10pm she DoorDashed a Big Mac, complete with a large fry and Dr Pepper. By 10:30 she had eaten the whole thing and totally zonked out. I personally cannot even look at caffein after 3pm, or I will be up all night. I let her do it. I wonder if that was the right move.

Rachel will stay in her bed indefinitely if she has no reason to get out of it. She always looks and smells great, but she will often go days without showering. She just cannot bring herself to do it. It breaks my heart. I know showering, eating well, moving will make her feel better. But how hard do you push a nearly adult?

Before she left for her dad’s house, I told her I thought a shower or a bath would be a good idea. It had clearly been a few days. She said she was tired and probably wouldn’t. I called her dad and suggested that he gently encourage her to bathe. The encouragement he gave turned into a fight and she called me in tears. She said something along the lines of “why can’t you just leave me alone and let me deal with this??” My interfering only made things worse. I should have backed off. I should have let her deal with her demons on her own. Right? Right?

I am not a dramatic person. I may have been a little dramatic in my younger years. My best friend Katie Hurd and I were always in some sort of fight. Every little thing that happened during my childhood was a big deal to me. But I have grown up to be a person who avoids drama to the extreme. I will do nearly anything to keep from dealing with an uncomfortable situation. I will edit myself, sensor myself. I will soothe, I will talk and talk in hopes of making sure everyone in my orbit is comfortable. Anything to avoid a difficult conversation. Anything to avoid the drama. I will wring my hands and fidget until I have fixed any unhappiness anyone around me is feeling.

This personality trait has served me well for the most part. I am agreeable. I am easy to be around. I am rarely difficult. But there are times I wish I could be angry. There are times I desperately wish I could stand my ground. I wish I could scream at people when things are not ok. I wish I could share my opinion with people who disagree with me on controversial topics. I wish I could push things over and throw a fit when it all becomes too much. Sometimes I just wish I could just give up and lie down, wherever I am, and let the world go by. But I don’t. And I won’t. I will keep being agreeable. I will keep avoiding the drama

I am probably dealing with my own little bit of depression. Which is new for me.

Shortly after my divorce, I had a lot of self-loathing. For the first time in my life I doubted the person I was. I engaged in some self-harm that I am not proud of. Self-harm I felt I was too old to be engaging with. It was an extremely difficult period of my life. But like everything else, I have swallowed it down. I drink my water. I do my workouts. I forge ahead.

I’m ok. Everything is ok. I will be alright in the end. This is my mantra. And I believe it. Usually. It is the same mantra I give my children. My child. My life is good. Their life is good. But often I am sad. Often I am overwhelmed. I worry it will always be just so hard. I worry it will not all end up ok.

When these feelings arise, and I don’t know what to do with them, I don’t drink my water. I don’t take a walk. I just call my mom.

I have a habit of planting flowers without gloves on. I love the feel of the dirt and the earth between my fingers. It’s grounding. I am getting older… and so are my hands. Between washing them a dozen times a day at work and washing dishes pretty much constantly, they are starting to look their age. So when I can remind myself to do so, I now mostly wear gloves when I dig into my soil.

In my other life. The one where I was a married stay-at-home mother with four young children, I had a vegetable garden. It was a glorious garden. We had nearly an acre of land, and a good chunk of it was designated to planting vegetables. Tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, corn, potatoes. You name it, we had it. We had bees. We had laying hens. But our garden was the thing to write home about. It was the envy of the entire neighborhood. Shelby would rototill it every spring. He would make even rows and plan where everything would go. I used to tease him about his need for exactness in a garden that would become chaos in just a few short weeks. We planted the garden together. Shelby made sure it was watered. I was the harvester. Tomatoes were our biggest crop. On any given season we had at least 40 tomato plants. That makes for a whole lot of tomatoes. I don’t think there was ever a season in which I got to all of them. I made endless jars of salsa, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce. Along with pickles, pickled beets, canned peaches from our peach trees. And jam. The best jam. It was so much work. And so many good memories. I am not convinced it saved us any money. But for quality of life it was pretty great.

Our huge bit of land needed to be watered manually, as we had no sprinkler system. When my marriage crumbled, and my husband finally moved out for good, the upkeep of the house and the yard was all on me. At least until we were able to sell the house. And it was hard. So hard. Being thrust into the working world, and taking care of four small children (who I had all the time back then) was hard on its own. The yard work suffered. There was no garden. There was barely a lawn. I truly resented the whole affair.

When we finally did sell the house and I was able to buy my own, I had very little criteria. It needed to be big enough to fit my kids and me. And it needed to be easy. No serious maintenance, no crumbling interior. No extensive yard work.

When my realtor (and my cousin) found a house that fit my criteria in suburban Meridian, I was hesitant. It was a generic house in a generic neighborhood, in a town I did not want to live in. It was big enough, but barely. And it was colorless.. The yard was boring. The exterior was bland. I need the color. I AM the color. But the second I walked into the house, I knew it was the house for me. It was built in 2005, so it wasn’t exactly new. But it was well maintained. And it was easy. It felt right.

We moved in during the spring of 2019. The yard was generic and unimpressive. It was fine. It needed nothing from me. My kids and I spent an entire year settling and recovering. I did nothing to improve our very functional yard or the home we lived in. We just survived.

In 2020, Covid hit, and it hit hard. I had some extra money from the sell of our other house, and had it bookmarked to take a trip to Spain with some friends. In the midst of the planning for this trip, everything shut down. The Spain trip was off. So I used my Spain money on the yard. I got in my groove. I took out the generic landscaping and threw in all the flowers I could get my hands on. I moved hundreds of pounds of rock into my gravel pit. I planted sod. I bought patio furniture. I made my yard my own. I love it. My yard is my pride and joy.

Up until now, I have focused on my flowers. And my grass. The idea of starting a vegetable garden has felt overwhelming. There was no natural space for it. And I am a little tired of the whole harvesting affair.

Hey have you all met Lilly? The kindest, most empathetic 15-year-old on the planet? The one who wants to save the earth from utter destruction? I have recently had to invest in a whole lot of reusable grocery bags. She also wants me to get reusable ziplock bags, she wants me to recycle, she insists we have a compost pile. And she wants to grow her own food.

In honor of Lilly, I have spent the last week prepping a vegetable garden out of our previous gravel pit. It has been expensive and hard. But I love it so much. It has brought me right back to my young mom days. I wear gloves for much of my yard work but when it comes to planting, I go back to bare hands. I want to touch and I want to feel. It is almost sensual.

Back in the day my favorite meal of all time was new potatoes from the garden, fresh zucchini, and two fried eggs from the laying hens we raised. Those days are gone, and I doubt the will ever come back fully. But I will try for a slice of it.

We have been surviving for the last four years on frozen food and generic Mac and Cheese. It’s all I could muster for a bit. This summer, we will have peas and potatoes, beets and zucchini and cucumbers. And all the tomatoes my kids can eat. I have the time for it now. The mental space. I doubt I will be doing much canning. We are just getting started after all. But it feels great to get back to business. Back to the dirt.

My friend’s dog died this weekend. She texted me that she found her in her yard. The dog was old and sick. The dog had a good life. The dog was loved and cared for. But still, my heart is breaking for her. Losing a pet is devastating. Every time.

When I was pregnant with Carson, we came home from a family dinner to a random stray cat in our downstairs living room. She appeared to be pregnant like me. I could not bring myself to turn another pregnant lady out into the cold. So we let her stay. Turns out she was not pregnant. She was just fat. But she was so sweet. My kids loved her. She had been with us for weeks before we realized she was never going to have babies. Rachel had named her (Jackie Cat). Therefore she was ours. She wasn’t the most house trained (which I suspect is the reason she was abandoned to our neck of the woods). But she was a good, loving cat. At night, she used to perch herself on the edge of Rachel’s bed in the most protective stance I have ever seen. I like to think she was determined to keep the littles safe. The kids could love her as hard as they wanted, and she would never flinch. She would just let them. She seemed to love it. She never scratched or showed aggression. She was sweet. We loved her.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, there was a short period where Lilly was extremely concerned we would kill Jackie and eat her. We had just raised meat chickens and taken them to slaughter. Lilly was convinced Jackie Cat faced the same fate. Lilly didn’t eat meat for years after this. She is still a vegetarian.

I am not great at laundry. I never have been. The number of times I have had to re-start the washer because the clothes have gotten moldy is embarrassing. There’s a ripe load in the washer right now (I really should stop writing and get some things done). Laundry sits on my bed for days before I work up the gumption to actually fold it. And by fold it, I mean sort it. I don’t turn anything right-side-out. I just put it into piles depending on which kid I think it belongs to. To this day, I have a habit of restarting the dryer to fluff up the laundry up before I fold it. It helps with wrinkles after the clothes have been sitting there for days. Shortly after adopting Jackie, I came downstairs to the laundry room, and the open dryer door. I shut the door and started the dryer. Just like I had done dozens of times before. I remember hearing a few thumps and wondering about it. I paused for a moment as I walked back up the stairs. Something subconscious in me decided I should check. I don’t know why. It easily could have been a pair of shoes. I opened the dryer door and Jackie Cat climbed out. A little dizzy and a little worse for the wear. But mostly ok. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had not gone back to check.

I am telling these stories for no other reason than they come to mind. And because I think they illustrate how important this stray cat became to us.

I have no idea how old Jackie Cat was when she landed in our home. She was an adult, and she seemed wizened. She lived with us for more than a dozen years before she stopped being fat. Before she stopped eating vigorously. She started to sleep a lot. She lost weight. Eventually she became frail. I should have noticed sooner. For months, I figured it was just Jackie getting older. My kids begged me to take her in to get a checkup. I meant to. But I just kept putting it off. Only after her claws started to come out of her paws did I take her in to the vet. I will never forgive myself for this. I should have done it sooner. I should have taken better care of her. I should have I should have I should have. When I finally did take her in, the news was not good. I knew it would be bad the second they weighed her. She went from being a 20lb cat that needed to go on a diet to an 11lb shell of herself. The diagnosis was feline cancer. With very little hope of treatment or recovery. We put her down the next day. I have never cried so hard as I did when her life left her body. And I didn’t even think I liked her all that much. Lilly did not stay in the room when we put her down. She couldn’t. Later, she said she could hear my sobs from the car.

During the very worst part of my marriage, my husband found a stray dog at a gas station while on a business trip. He brought the sweet dog home. We bathed her, named her (Ginger). And then we found her owner. Ginger loved us. She wanted to be with all of us all the time. I would guess she was at least 50lbs, but she would still sit in our laps any chance she got. We made plans for her owner to drive down from Twin Falls to pick her up. When he arrived, I opened the door and Ginger sprinted out. Never in my life have I seen an animal so beside themself. Her tail wagged so hard I thought it might fall off. The dog that we thought would be ours forever lost her mind when she saw her person.

Considering our tenuous marital situation, I did not want to try for another dog. But Shelby came home with one anyway. An action that at the time felt akin to intentionally getting pregnant in hopes of saving the marriage. Penny was Labrador-Pit mix that made me nervous. I was never a fan of Pits. I heard all the horror stories, and I was wary. She did not get along with the cats, and she was unsure about the kids. I did not want her in my home. Any time I let her outside, she would figure out a way to get over our 6-foot fence and roam the neighborhood. 9 times out of 10 she would find a pile of poop to roll in. And I would have to add her to the list of creatures that needed a bath on any given night. When my husband finally did move out, he couldn’t take the damn dog with him. The intention was always that he would take her when he was in the right situation. But being in the right situation took ages. In the meantime I got used to her. I began to rely on her. I grew to love her. Fiercely. And she grew to love me. She learned how to deal with the cats and the kids, and I learned to appreciate her. She still has the habit of climbing our six-foot-fence to experience the world. And she is still impossible when it comes to walks. But she loves the kids. And even the cat. She makes me feel safe and loved. She is my protector and my friend. When the kids are not here, she is my person.

We have a strict rule about not feeding the dog human food. My rhetoric is that it’s bad for her. And if we love the dog, and want her to live as long as possible, she needs to eat her (very expensive) dog food, and her dog food only. My kids break this rule regularly. And I get after them. And when they are gone, I share all my dinners with Penny. A few bites here and there. I want to say no. But she is just so cute.

Penny will not live forever. By my calculations, she will pass around the same time that Emmy graduates from high school. I will cry and cry, and I will never be the same. I will be inconsolable. I will blame myself.

Pets, especially dogs and cats, bring nothing but joy. We will outlive our pets pretty much every time. But we have them anyway. By bringing them into our homes, we are setting ourselves up for sadness and sorrow. Every time. But also joy.

I remember hearing stories about people spending thousands of dollar on this treatment or that, only to prolong or improve the life of their pet. I would shake my head. I would wonder what the point was. I was so naive.

I have never seen a John Wick film. I love Keanu Reeves more than I have ever loved a celebrity. He is not the world’s best actor, but he seems good and kind. And he is absolutely so fun to see on the big screen. I watched an interview with him recently about one of the John Wick movies. The interviewer said something like “you kill hundreds of people in these films, and nobody bats an eye, but when your dog dies, people lose their mind”. He responds with something like “it’s because the animal is innocent.” That is exactly right. Our pets do nothing but love us. They are intrinsically good. And they rely on us to love them. Abusing this love, this privilege is nothing short of evil.

My current cat Isabell is a giant bitch. As I am writing this post, she is attacking me. I have no idea what she even wants. She acts like she wants me to pet her, but if I do pet her for more than 15 seconds she bites me. She has a habit of lying in wait for any victim. Me, the kids, the poor dog who is utterly terrified of her. She pounces. And we are all scarred. She serves no functional purpose. Hell, she is technically not even my cat. She belongs to Lilly. When she dies, which I know she will, I will bawl my eyes out. Despite her seeming uselessness, I would do anything to keep her safe and healthy. I will take all the bites and scratches if it means she feels loved and protected. I don’t even know why. I just love her.

I saw my friend today. I asked her how she was and she just sobbed. She said a few fragmented sentences. I gathered “I let her down. I should have done better. I am jinxed.” I know my friend did all she could for her sweet Bella. I know she loved her. I know Bella passing was a result of poor health and age. And I know that saying any of these things to my friend will not help. She lost her companion. She lost her love. There are no words that will help her process this grief. So I said nothing. I just let her cry. It takes time. That’s all. My friend also swore she will never get another pet. This I don’t believe. Once you experience the joy of loving an innocent animal, as we do our pets, you never go back.

We will nearly never outlive our pets. They will always break our hearts. But we still have them, and keep them. We protect them. Because they add to our quality of life. Because they make everything just a little bit better. Penny makes me feel safe and loved. Isabelle, despite her violence, helps me feel a little less alone. They love, unconditionally.

If Penny were to contract some terrible disease that I could eradicate with a few thousand dollars, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would like to believe that if it was hopeless, and that any treatment would just elongate the inevitable, I would have the strength and the wisdom to let her go. But I don’t know.

Anyone who has had or currently has small children has heard some variation of the following: “Enjoy every moment, because they grow up fast.” And they do. Mine became teenagers in the blink of an eye. The four of them are pretty close in age, so it feels like this has happened suddenly. In the younger days, we were doing each stage in lumps. We had four baby-toddlers for what felt like years. Then we had four young children, four pre-teen to early teens. Now all except Emmy are solidly in their teen years. And Emmy is darn close. They did grow up fast. And I definitely did not enjoy every moment.

Rachel is my oldest. My pregnancy with her was textbook. I was sick for a second. The rest was fun and interesting. Labor was long, but not traumatic. She was a brilliantly easy baby. Rarely cried, slept through the night pretty quick, had an easy temperament. We were lucky. I know that now, but at the time, I just chalked it all up to my physical superiority and excellent parenting skills. Trying for Lilly mere months after I had Rachel was an easy decision. Pregnancy was cool. Babies were fun. And I was an amazing mother…

I found out I was pregnant with Lilly on Rachel’s first birthday. Which is incidentally about the time Rachel became… curious. Parenting was no longer about feeding, napping, holding. It was now about my emotional survival and Rachel’s physical safety. She was still good-natured, but keeping her alive became a near-full-time job. She wanted to see, touch, taste everything. I would describe this time in her life as manic. During my Lilly pregnancy, Rachel gave up naps. Exceptionally early. When I needed her to nap the most. By the time Lilly was born, I was already tired.

I will not bore you all with the ins and outs of each of my other pregnancies. What each kid was like at the time, etc.. I had 4 kids in 5-and-a-half years and it was hard. Enough said. Physically, they needed so much from me. To bathe them, to feed them, to dress them, To buckle them into the car, to cuddle them. By the end of every day I had the very pointed desire not to be touched by anyone. And I love physical touch.

Parenting toddlers and babies is both difficult and boring. Which is the worst combination. But it is simple. You feed them, you dress them, you love them, you keep them alive. Bonus, they are so so cute. They say cute things, they do cute things, they love you unconditionally. They want all the cuddles. You are their hero. You can do no wrong. They are intrinsically precious. My teenagers are categorically not cute or precious. And they no longer see me as a perfect human being. They still love me. Fiercely. But my humanness is starting to show.

Another phrase I am sure all you parents have heard. “Just wait until they are teenagers”. The implication is that this is where the real work is. And this is true to some degree. My sister Summer once said something like “toddlers and babies are physically hard. But teenagers are emotionally difficult.” Spot on. Now that my kids are in their teen years, the problems are more complex. The problems are heartbreaking. The problems are heavy. But raising teenagers doesn’t suck. Not even a little bit.

In my mind, I am just exiting my teenage years. It just happened, right? I am still a young adult. In reality, it’s been 25 years since I have dealt with the issues my teens are dealing with right now. But I remember it well enough to know that, while living with teenagers is difficult, being one is much harder. The hormones, the uncertainty, the drama. The almost-adultness of it. As a mom dealing with teenagers, I can walk away from it. I can hide in my room. I can escape into an audiobook. I can get lost in my work. But for my teenagers living a teenage life, there is no escape. I try very hard to remember this every single day.

The hardest teen years as a parent by far have been the early teenage years. Years 11-13 specifically. 12-year-olds mimic 3-year-olds in every way. They think the world revolves around them, and don’t understand why we do not all bow to their needs. They are emotional, unreasonable, unkind. I have had to sit on my hands on many occasions with my preteen kids.

But categorically, as my kids have exited these years, they have become exceptional humans. And exceptionally easy to parent. My teens are not great students. They are not taking advance placement classes. They do not have anywhere near a 4.0 average. They are passing. They will graduate. They do not excel at sports or music. They do not behave perfectly. But they make relatively good decisions. They don’t bully. They are aware of their peers. They are kind. They want to do great things with their lives. And I love hearing about all of it. My teenagers are INTERESTING. And they are good. I like what they have to say.

Now that they are older, we can watch all the things. We play games that are not Candyland and Shoots and Ladders. We have meaningful conversations. I do not have to spend my days making sure they are physically safe. They can feed and dress themselves. Forget buckling them into carseats. These kids can mostly drive themselves around town. And I love all of it. So much.

I have less control over the ins and outs of their lives. I hate this, but I also kind of embrace it.

We had a trampoline when the kids were little. Early on I realized that I absolutely could not watch them playing on it. I knew it was dangerous. I knew they could be injured. Watching them do all the tricks just gave me anxiety. Carson even broke his arm once playing on that damned trampoline. But I knew I needed to let them play. So I did. I just didn’t watch. I couldn’t.

Raising teenagers is much the same. There are times I cannot watch. I cannot participate or condone. I cannot be in Rachel’s car and tell her to slow down. To stop riding the other car’s bumper. I cannot tell her friends to stop swearing (among other things I don’t want to think about). I cannot control how they behave once they leave our front door. I have to trust them. But I need to let them experience it all. They need to do life. They need to have their hearts broken. They need to face all that life is going to throw at them. They need to feel the heavy. And I need to impotently stand back and let it happen. To a degree. Just like I took Carson to the doctor when he broke his arm, I need to be here for them when the emotional shit hits the fan. I soothe with my words, with my availability. I have to heal by just being here. This is all I can do.

When I was a kid, my mom was all about the home-made meals. Healthy meals. Everything was whole wheat. Everything was from scratch. We never had soda in the house. Or freezer meals. If you wanted a snack, it was a banana or a slice of cheese. Or a homemade piece of bread with peanut butter and jam if you were lucky. When I approached my teenage years, that changed. All the sudden, the freezer was full of Hot Pockets and frozen pizzas. There were granola bars and animal crackers and a variety of other snacks I never saw in my younger years. Part of this was a change in my family’s socioeconomic status. Money was not quite so tight as it was in my early years. But a big part of it was my mom’s attempt to keep us close. She made our house a safe-place for all my friends. A place where they could eat all the Hot Pockets, and take naps on the couch, and watch all the movies. Her reasoning was that this would keep us close to home. If our house was the fun house, the safe house, we would be more likely to stay put. In a controlled environment. This was genius. I have taken a card from my mom’s deck, and tried to do the same at my own small and modest home. There are 5 of us in a very tight space. But if my kids want friends over, I say yes. If they want half a dozen friends to spend the night, I give them my pillows and make an extra special meal. I keep the pantry full of all the snacks. Anything to keep these four amazing incredible humans as close to me as possible.

Teenagers are great. They are the absolute best. For all you parents out there approaching the teenage years, don’t be scared. Your toddler years are ending, and a new and better dawn is arising. It is a wild and amazing ride. It is more interesting, more textured than the toddler and young child years. And it is a blessing and a privilege to be involved with these people who will shape our future years.

My mom often says that she wished she could go back and hold us as toddlers. Just for a moment. Not forever. I feel this so hard. I miss the unconditional love. I miss how cute they were. I miss the simplicity of it. I miss the cuddles. But just for a moment. The teen years is where it is at. I love this time so much I wish I could bottle it and keep it forever. It will pass. They will all become young adults. And someday they will be my age. They will reminisce about when they were young. They will remember how hard it was to be a teenager. They will be better parents than I was. That’s my legacy. That my kids do a little better than I did.

We are hard on this upcoming generation. They are ridiculous, pampered, uneducated. They are naive. But that is what everyone says about the next group of upcoming adults. I think our young people are great. They will do good things. They will make a difference in our world. Just like every generation before them. God save and protect our teens. Let us give them the respect and courtesy they deserver.

In college I majored in psychology. It was a privileged major. I did not know that at the time, but I know it now. In order to making a living as a psychologist you need a masters degree at a minimum. Preferably you get a PhD, and go on to teach at a university while simultaneously trying to publish studies. All while trying to unbury yourself from all the student debt.

I had no real concept of what I would do with my degree when I committed to it. I just knew I was interested in studying how the mind works. Read into that what you will. So I spent a few thousand dollars of my parents’ money in pursuit of knowledge that I would essentially do nothing with in a professional capacity. From a practical standpoint it would have been much wiser for me to go into computer science or finance and business, or anything really (besides theater or communication). For heaven’s sake, my only required math class was called “math for the liberal arts student”. I graduated with a lot of knowledge about the human brain, and zero job prospectives.

I loved my major, and I am proud of my degree. I was the first person in my immediate family to receive a college degree. My parents included. As the third of six kids, I think getting my degree is an accomplishment I should tout to the world.

Speaking of being the third of six… One of the classes I took as an undergrad was childhood development. I loved this class and I loved my professor. She was a middle aged woman, and a relatively new mom. She was earthy, and maybe even a little homely. Thick set with a short brown bowl cut and glasses. She married and had her two kids later in life. One of the most poignant memories I have of her is the time she told us that if she knew how much she loved having kids, she would have started sooner and had more. She was incredibly open about sex, and the joy of sex. Considering I was at a very religious college at the time, her openness was refreshing.

During one of her lessons, she divided us into groups according to birth order. This being a college predominantly made up of mormon kids with big families, dividing us up into oldest, middle, and youngest wasn’t going to cut it. We had groups of oldest, second oldest, middle, second to youngest, and youngest. We had a simple assignment. Each group was given a virtual $500,000 budget to plan a party.

I am the third of six so I was solidly in the middle child category. My group went all out. We rented and entire cruise ship with all the bells and whistles. And we hired a famous band to perform. I don’t remember which band. I want to say Aerosmith, but that might be wishful thinking. Whatever the band, I am sure they would have asked for more than our budget allowed. I remember being very aware that we were going way over budget, but the planning was just so fun!

When it came time to present, each birth order laid out their plan. After each presentation, my professor read a synopsis of what was typical amongst that group. It was spot on every single time.

I tried to find any information I could on the $500,000 study, but I came up dry. So I will tell you the two birth orders I remember most clearly.

My group presented our monstrosity of a party, and when we were done, my professor said something like “the middle child’s party will be flashy and extravagant, and they will most likely go over budget.” Bingo.

One of the groups that presented planned nothing. I want to say it was the second oldest child group but I don’t remember clearly. The young man presenting said something like “we thought this was stupid, so we didn’t do it.” My professor’s synopsis read something like “this group will either put in minimal effort, or they will refuse to participate altogether.”

The experience was mind blowing. And I have been a firm believer of the role of birth order ever since.

I come from a family of six kids, so the whole oldest, middle, youngest child synopsis doesn’t hold totally true for all of us. Summer is the oldest, but by quite a bit. She reads more like an only child in a lot of ways. She is independent, driven, wise, creative. Sarah reads more like an oldest child. Reliable, structured, competitive.

In being the third born, I am a classic middle child. In my younger years, I may or may not have been neglected the spotlight, but either way I demanded it. I did anything I could to differentiate myself from my older sisters. Sarah was on homecoming court. So I cut my hair short and stopped shaving my legs. Sarah was athletic, so I did theater and learned to play the guitar. I was louder than I needed to be. And I am ashamed to say, I did many many stupid things in my younger years in order to be noticed. At the time, I preferred recognition over anonymity, even if it meant I played the fool. As a teenager, I was raucous, inappropriate, too open. Anything I could be in order not to be anonymous. In order to differentiate myself from my sisters. I still struggle with this to some degree. I like to think I have tempered this tendancy, but I don’t know.

I also have an incessant need for everyone to get along. Mostly in my family, but really in all aspects of life. This ringing of hands, wanting everyone to just be happy, it’s very middle child of me.

As the fourth of six kids, Chris was a different middle child. He truly was the one that missed the spotlight. The one who felt neglected. The one who just slipped into the shadows, intentionally allowing the rest of us to shine. I feel sad and sorry I did not recognize this in my younger years. Chris had a lot to offer. And we missed it.

I see the same middle child tendencies in Lilly as I see in myself. Her life goal seems to be that we all get along. That I am happy, that Rachel’s needs are met, that Emmy feels loved, that Carson is recognized. Lilly is the first middle child. Just like I was. Lilly will do anything in her power to make sure everyone in her family circle and her friend circle are happy. Comfortable. At ease.

Carson is the second middle child. In the same category as my brother Chris. And he also experiences little spotlight. My dad spent two days with Carson this week. He hired him to help my parents move into their new house. They moved furniture, built shelves, created spaces. Today my mom took Lilly to run an errand. The dummy that I am, I called my mom and asked her about her time with Lilly was. My dad was in on the call and interrupted to ask “Do you want to know how my time with Carson was?” He didn’t do it to be rude, or make a point. He was just curious. But it made me think for half a second. I should have asked. I didn’t even think to. Carson is easy. He requires little attention from me. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need the attention. Just ask my brother Chris.

Rachel as the oldest is truly a trip. When she was around 8, I told her she could do nothing until her room was clean. I left her to her task for a while. When I checked back, she was working hard on her room ORGANIZING HER GARBAGE. She was compiling small scraps of paper in order of importance, completely ignoring the chaos that was her room. I asked her the other day if she thought she fit the oldest child profile.. Organized, list-oriented, outspoken, independent, perfectionist. She said she identified with some of it. She is outspoken and independent. She loves a good list. And she has a black and white view on things. There is right and wrong with Rachel. And very little grey. The rest though… She is not organized. Not at all.

Every one of the kids will tell you Emmy is my favorite. This is not strictly true. Emmy is always nice to me. Which is great. And she spends time with me. I’m her most important person right now. But that is more age related. In a couple years, I am sure I will hardly see her. The typical traits of a youngest child are attention seeking, manipulative, affectionate and charming, easy-going, and carefree. Emmy loves and needs attention. She is charming and she is affectionate. But manipulative? No. Carefree? Definitely not. She has way more anxiety than an 11-year-old should have. And attention seeking? Yeah, she demands attention where she needs it. But good for her.

Birth order plays a huge role in who we will be. Of course it does. With Rachel, I had huge expectations about the kind of kid she would be. Expectations I wish I could take back. Expectations that shaped her. Lilly probably felt like she had to fight for the love we gave Rachel. She had to define herself. Make herself different and distinct from her sister. Carson had to fight his way in, being the third child and the only boy. He has held back. Emmy is loved, unequivocally. She is man-handled. She is moved about. But she is loved. Obsessed over. Cherished. It’s probably hard not to embrace that.

Ultimately we get to decide who we will be. But it would be foolish to believe factors such as birth order, socioeconomic status, race, and a million other factors don’t play a role. All you can do is take what you are given and make the decision to do the best with it. Rachel can choose to let go of some of her black and white. Lilly can decide her own happiness is more important than making sure everyone in her world is comfortable. Carson can decide to demand the spotlight. Emmy can learn to stand up for herself. I don’t know. I am just spitballing here. Middle child that I am, I just want everyone to be happy.

If I die before my time, I would guess that my epitaph would read “She was just so nice”… and I am nice. Pretty much always. I go out of my way to be nice. Nice to my employees, nice to my kids, nice to my friends, nice to strangers on the street. There is nothing in the world I would not do to keep from being seen as not nice to anyone. At all cost. I make eye contact with every clerk at every store I ever check out at. I make small talk with the lady scanning my groceries. Eye contact and conversation at the bank, at the gas station, at Walmart. I say so many thank you’s, so many I’m sorries, so many excuse me’s. Always just so nice. I am the anti-Karen.

On the surface this niceness seems like a good thing, a positive attribute. And most of the time it is. But sometimes my incessant need to be nice is unkind. To the people in my life, and to myself.

Running a business means that I get approached frequently by companies offering all kinds of products and services. Sometimes these companies have something significant to offer, but more often than not, it is just a time and money waste for what I am trying to accomplish. They all want a meeting, and I nearly always commit to this. To be nice. Many times I cancel. Repeatedly. Until they give up. Sometimes I take the meeting. And then ghost them when they try and follow up. I don’t want to say no. It doesn’t feel nice. But wasting the time of these professionals trying to make a living isn’t kind. It would be kinder to say “no thank you” as soon as I know I am not interested. I am working on it.

Back in my younger days, I danced. Not well, but I did it. Year after year, until high school, when I realized it was not a talent I would ever excel at. When I was around middle school age, I was in a dance class with a girl I will call Carolina. At that age, every girl in my dance class was a little awkward, with our budding womanhood and our constant musky smell. But Carolina was a bit more awkward than the rest of us. She was reserved and a little homely. Nobody was mean to her, but not one of us went out of our way to befriend her. She was just so odd. For one of our dance performances, we were supposed to wear jeans over our leotards. This was in a day that hip-huggers and flared jeans were all the rage. I would describe what Carolina was wearing for our performance as “mom jeans”. The waistline was at her belly button and the jeans tapered at the ankles. The exact style my teenage daughters embrace now. But back then, totally not cool. A friend of mine who was in the same class approached me and whispered “look at Carolina’s jeans!” She giggled as I made eye contact with Carolina. It was clear to anyone watching that we were talking about her, and Carolina knew it. I did not participate in making fun of Carolina. But I did smile. And I said nothing to my friend about her unkindness. What a jerk I was. I should have done something. I should have pointed out how unkind my friend’s comments were. I wanted to. I knew what she said was not right. But I also didn’t want my friend to feel uncomfortable. I wanted to avoid the conflict. I didn’t want my friend to be mad at me. So I did nothing. I hate this memory. In fact, I have repressed it pretty successfully until recently. I wish I could go back and make an effort to be kind to Carolina. To befriend her. I wish I had stood up for her. This is a painful memory that I don’t like thinking about. And a perfect example of a time when I could have chosen being kind over being nice.

It is easy to justify this experience by blaming my youth. But this pattern has continued my entire life. I was no bully in high school. I witnessed bullying. Sometimes I stood up for my classmates. But sometimes I stood by and watched, and did nothing besides shake my head. I wish I could go back. I would do my best to make every one of my classmates feel loved and accepted. I wish I wish I wish.

And then there is dating… Every so often I decide to crawl out from under my rock and go on a date. So far it has pretty much always ended the same way. With me realizing instantly that I am not interested in whoever I am meeting. Post-date I spend an unreasonable amount of time writing and rewriting text messages to let the guy down easy. I thought I was ready to date but I am not. I have too much going on right now to be involved with someone. You seem like a great guy and you are super good-looking, but I am just not in the right place for a relationship.. Why can’t I say “I’m just not interested”? This is what I would want, were the roles reversed. I can handle it. So can they. People are tougher than I give them credit for.

I hate to admit this. It hurts my soul to say it. But there is a good chance that my failed marriage would have lasted if I had been less nice. Niceness makes it hard to draw boundaries. To stand your ground. Niceness makes it hard to demand what you need. In order to be nice, you let a lot of things go that you shouldn’t. In a relationship, this can be detrimental. In mine, it most certainly was.

Growing up, my family was religious. Sundays were church days. No exceptions. We showed up to church early. We sat in the second pew without fail. Nobody sat in the first pew, so essentially we were front row church goers. I don’t practice the religion of my youth anymore, and for what I think are good reasons. No bad feelings. Growing up in this religion provided me a very safe and happy upbringing. I am grateful. But I feel I have gleamed all the good I can from this religion. I have moved on. Much of my family still does practice. And I think that is great. The family members who still practice don’t know why I chose to leave the church. Because they have never asked. And I have never volunteered. I don’t share, because I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. I would bet good money that this is the same reason my family doesn’t ask why I left the church. We all want to be nice, to be polite. To not offend. To avoid conflict. So we tip-toe around it. When the topic of religion comes up, I listen and I contribute where I can. In the least offensive way possible. I don’t know that this is the wrong approach. But there are times I wish I felt comfortable with letting it all out, even if it means offending the people in my world that love me the most, unconditionally. If I cannot be open with the people who love me regardless of anything I have done in the world, who can I be open with?

A few weeks ago Rachel was hanging out with a new friend. A boy. She texted me from his house and asked me to make up an excuse for her to come home. Apparently he kept trying to touch and tickle her. It was making her uncomfortable and she could not figure out how to exit the situation without hurting his feelings. I called her a minute later and told her she was in big trouble and had to come home… now. Of course I did. That’s what I am here for. My kids know they can use me as an excuse any time they want to get out of anything. I have told them this on many occasions. They can tell whoever they want that I am the worst in the world if it gets them out of a bad situation. But…. I really wish I had provided Rachel with the emotional tools to tell this boy she was uncomfortable. And to walk out the door on her own accord. This compulsion to be nice is clearly something I have passed onto my own kids. It fills me with regret. The situation does however illustrate the limit to my niceness. I don’t have any issue being a huge bitch if it helps my kids. I will be the biggest Karen ever if it benefits the four humans I love most in the entire world.

Ahh Karen. We all joke about Karens.. the stereotypical woman who throws a fit when things don’t go her way. She stomps her foot. She screams when she doesn’t get what she wants. She sends her meals back. She insists on exact change. She wants the seat at the restaurant she feels she deserves. She demands people behave appropriately. She does not care who she offends. On Instagram, I watch the reel videos of all the Karens. And I laugh and shake my head. Confident that I would never act that way. But in a small way, I respect the Karens of the world. Good for you for fucking politeness (sorry mom). Good for you for standing your ground when the rest of the world calls you crazy. Good for you for being unapologetic. May we all tap into our inner Karen when needed. I will tip my hat to all the Karens, as long as they are ultimately kind. Niceness has its place. But kindness is the key.

Sarah is almost exactly two years older than me. In our youth, she was brutal. She teased and tormented me endlessly. Sometimes I hated her. Mostly I just wanted her to love me. High school was a turning point. All the issues of our childhood became a nothing. And we became good friends. We still are good friends.

I am just under two years older than Chris. When we were kids I was borderline sadistic towards him. I am sure he has physical scars, and probably some emotional ones thanks to me. There were probably times he hated me. I don’t blame him. I was pretty rotten. High school was a turning point for us as well. We got along. We became friends. We are still friends.

As adults, I love both Sarah and Chris to the point of dysfunction. If Sarah asked me to kill someone for her, I would do it. I would bet money that Chris would kill someone for me. All the fights, the violence, the mean words, they mean nothing now.

I didn’t fight with Merry and Andrew. The age difference was too vast. I still tormented them to some degree. When Andrew was around three, I cut his eyelashes off. I don’t even know why. When my mom noticed, she blamed him and told him not to do it again. I witnessed this interaction. I didn’t come clean, and he didn’t rat me out. He should have… I also told him he would turn into a girl at the age of eight. He totally believed me. I was a jerk.

Summer and I never fought. She was a lot older than me. And she was my hero. I idolized her. She always made me feel important and loved. But as adults we have had some tough moments. Some of these moments are hard to relive. Some of them I would rather forget. They are painful. But we have always come back to a place of love. She is still my hero.

When I got married 20 years ago, I did not do it with the intention of someday being divorced. I can look back now with my wise old eyes and recognize there were problems from the start. Even before I married my husband, I knew innately that it was not a good decision. I did it anyway. I don’t regret it. We had great times together. We had four beautiful amazing and interesting children. We built a life together. It didn’t last. But my marriage is part of the tapestry of my very good life.

Even so. Even when things turned ugly. Even when my marriage was bringing me far more pain than joy. Even when it was more painful than simple neutrality.. divorce was not something I wanted. It was something I actively fought against. For too long.

I grew up in a household where marriage was sacred. It was something to be protected against all trials and pain. Marriage was supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be worth it. But I also grew up witnessing a marriage that was healthy. My parents supported, respected, loved each other. Yes, it was painful and difficult, but they were two people who wanted to make it work. They actively tried to better themselves, and supported each other in the same persuit. In a marriage like that, it is achievable to weather the storms. That was not the kind of marriage I experienced. We were two people who loved each other. But the toxic aspects of the marriage overtook the positive.

My divorce was hard on me, yes. Of course it was. But it was especially devastating for my kids. When we were married, Shelby would often tell the kids “mom and I will never divorce. Ever. Promise”. Even in our happiest times I would cringe when he said this. I think I knew intrinsically that our relationship was doomed. What a hard reckoning for my kids our divorce was.

Shortly after Shelby and I split, Lilly asked me what we would do if we had nowhere to live. It was a good question, as I had spent most of my married life at home with my kids. Without a job. Without a resumé. I had my degree, and that was something. But I had no solid income. No good prospects. How was I to provide for these four small beings and myself?

I asked her what she thought would happen if we lost our home. She said “well Nona and Papa would take care of us.” That got me thinking. Nona and Papa, being my parents, would do anything to ensure we had a place to live. What would happen if they were no longer able to take care of us? Easy answer. I have my sister Sarah. She would never let us be homeless. And my sister Summer too. And then Merry and Chris and Andrew. And if for some reason I cannot count on my siblings, I have my aunts. Gigi would do anything for me if I was in crisis. So would aunt Jamie and aunt Jo. My uncle Charlie would surely step in if I needed him. And if something happened to all of these people, I have dozens of cousins who would step in to help me. I have an unreasonably enormous safety net.

I was nearing my forties before I realized how rare my vast safety net is. I dated a man for a while who had two small children of his own. He is a good man. He is a good dad. He would do anything for his kids. His mom is older, and lives hours away, and was never very involved in the first place. He has siblings, but for a variety of reasons, he is not close to any of them. When it came time for work and gymnastics and soccer and Girl Scouts and dentist appointments, it was all him. He told me regularly “I have no help”. It was a little heartbreaking.

If I need help transporting this kid to this or that event, all I have to do is ask and my folks are there. Rachel is dealing with her own mental issues. My parents ask what they can do to help her. Emmy needs to get to gymnastics and I have to work. They rearrange their schedule to help out. Carson wants to do mountain biking. They buy him a bike, and offer to help get him to practices. On Emmy’s final basketball game of her season, she had a dozen family members rooting for her in the bleachers. At 9am. On a Saturday.

I work with a wonderful woman who has four kids of her own. She is strong and capable and independent. She is in every way, one of the most incredible people I have had the pleasure of knowing. She could climb any mountain. She could overcome any obstacle. And she does. Her four kids are similar in age to my own four kids, so we have a lot to talk about. Our parenting styles are similar. We are chill, we don’t yell, we take care of their needs. We let them be who they are. But my parenting approach is privileged. I have their dad, who despite being someone I don’t want to be married to, is a really good father. I have my parents, who will alter their own lives at the drop of a hat if I need them to be involved. I have five siblings who show up when I need them. My friend has nobody. Her childrens’ father has passed away. Even when he was alive, he wasn’t very involved. Her father has passed away as well. So has her mother. She is utterly alone. She is raising her four children on her own, and doing a damn good job of it. But she is doing it without support. Without the love and help she deserves. She is doing it without family.

Here is the thing she is doing. And it’s the same thing my old boyfriend is doing. It’s the thing I am trying to do. She is creating what she wanted in her own life. She is doing it through her own children. They might fight now. They might hate each other at times. They will probably end up with emotional and physical scars. But they will be there for each other. If one needs to leave a bad marriage, the others will rally. If their nieces and nephews need them, they will be there. These kids we are raising will never be alone. That’s the goal. That’s the joy and privilege of having a family.