I wasn’t always a Dolly Parton fan.

In fact, in my younger (and stupider) years I thought she was a joke. Countless times as a teenager, I’d stick throw pillows up my shirt, making my ample cleavage look even larger, and proclaim myself to be Dolly Parton. I’m ashamed I judged Dolly for her appearance and rated her value by her bra size.

Throughout my evangelical years, I was scandalized that Dolly Parton called herself a Christian and sang about God when she was clearly not living what I would’ve considered a “godly lifestyle.” Not that I knew what kind of lifestyle she lived, but with those tight clothes and rhinestones, it couldn’t be good. I mean, she was in a move called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. That’s all I needed to know.

I don’t know how it happened, perhaps it was bit by bit, but one day I realized I didn’t just like Dolly Parton; I adored her. Even though I’m not a big fan of it, the Queen of Country Music won my love with songs like “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5,” “Jolene,” and my personal favorite, “Here You Come Again.” Her performance in the 80’s movie Steel Magnolias was magnificent and I think she was a lot like the character she played.

Not only was Dolly a talented performer, I learned she was a good, kind, and generous person. She was married to Carl Dean for 60 years, clearly not the hussy I thought she was. Dolly’s father never learned how to read, so she started Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, an international organization that puts books in the hands of children. When I got my first covid vaccine, I called it my Dolly shot because she famously donated $1 million to fund covid research.

I watched interviews with Dolly where she openly admitted to having plastic surgery. She shrugged off the critics saying she liked the way she looked and laughed off being too much for some. There’s something about a woman who says, “This is who I am. I’m not for everyone, but I’ll be kind to you anyway.” Because Dolly Parton was comfortable with herself, even calling herself a “backwoods Barbie,” she modeled self-acceptance to me.

I imagined if I ever met Dolly, she’d look me in the eye and say something like, “There’s no such thing as too much glitter so sprinkle yours liberally.” She’d mean it metaphorically and literally, of course. She was the kind of person who I’d be nervous to meet, but in her presence I’d feel immediately accepted.

I think a lot of us feel that way, which is why her death cuts so deep. Sure, we didn’t know her personally, but we deeply feel her loss. Someone special who made this world glimmer with hope. It feels like the darkness of this present age grew darker when the world learned of her passing.

How do we live in a Dolly-free world?

We choose to live like Dolly–be kind, give generously, and always leave a little sparkle wherever we go. It’s the Dolly Parton way.

Bifocals.

It wasn’t the candles on the cake that brought me to the realization I’m middle-aged. It was my optometrist flashing a light in my eyes, asking whether the first lens or the second lens looked clearer, and holding up a small card asking me to read numbers.

Then he delivered his pronouncement. “It’s time to talk about bifocals.”

And we did, but I delayed actually doing anything about it.

Fourteen months later, I finally gave in. I needed to get bifocals; it was getting hard to crochet and to read. Because my ophthalmologist (yes, I see two different doctors for my eyes) was concerned bifocals would be a difficult adjustment for me, we decided to opt for contacts and reading glasses. I went for my lens fitting and am awaiting my trial pair of contacts.

My Jess from “New Girl” and Liz Lemon era has ended now I’m moving into my Professor McGonagall era.

A writer friend recently shared that books set in the 90’s are “historical fiction.” Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, and Green Day, are oldies music. But the 90’s were just yester–30 years ago. How have I lived over 40 years on this spinning blue and green orb? And where has the time gone?

I’d noticed the white hairs popping up along my hairline, but they’re hidden nicely in my blond locks. My knees have been arthritic since I was a teenager, so they’re unreliable narrators. I’ve crocheted for 14 years and enjoyed bird watching and gardening even longer than that. Clearly, I was grandmacore before it was trendy.

I’m at the weird age where my older friends are becoming grandparents and my younger friends are becoming parents. People are on their second or third marriages and I’m still waiting for my first. Meanwhile, perimenopause is knocking on my uterus, letting me know my childbearing years are behind me.

When I reflect on my 46 years of life, there are good, even great, times and blessings galore. As a whole though, I’m not that impressed. More than half of my life has been plagued with debilitating mental health conditions. It’s not like those have magically disappeared with 22 years of medications and therapy, but I’ve learned to better manage them. There have also been medical concerns, like almost going blind and dying when I was 21 from two different conditions, chronic health issues, weight gain and weight loss, hypermobility issues, fibromyalgia, and everything else. I’ve felt old before I was middle-aged.

I never had the wedding I dreamed about since I was a child or the husband I was promised if I “stayed pure” or the children I was born to raise. There are so many things I desperately wanted that I never got or experienced and some I never will because the time has passed. I’ve already lost both of my parents and have no family. There’s terrible grief in all of that.

But there’s also contentment that comes after turning 40, sort of a “this is my life and I accept it” feeling. It started when I stopped wearing makeup, unless it was for a special occasion. This is my face, I figured, people might as well get used to it. Then I wore comfortable clothes instead of purely fashionable ones. I stopped looking for a husband and learned how to rely on my own skills. I realized kids are great, but also tiring and expensive. Pets are also tiring and expensive, but at least I can leave them home alone. Moreover, I started becoming a new woman, a braver person, and someone who still wanted to be something when she grew up.

And I finally accepted that I’ve always been somebody who is valuable, precious, and love. I have talents, hopes, dreams, and abilities. I not only survived, I’ve thrived and that resilience has brought me this far.

Now I’m all of the above with bifocals and the wisdom that comes from over four decades of life.

I am the rat king.

But not like the Rat King (or Mouse King) from “The Nutcracker” or Nicodemus, the aged ruler from The Rats of Nimh.

I’m talking about the mythical phenomenon of a group of rats bound together by their tails due to a sticky substance or other entanglement making the rats unable to escape. There have been documented over 60 times in the past 500 years, including one in 2021 in Estonia composed of 13 rats, which were humanely euthanized and studied.

However, while the rat king is a rare phenomenon, there have been far more documented sightings of the squirrel king, when young squirrels’ tails become entangled in their nest. This sticky situation almost always results in death for both squirrels and rats.

As fascinating as this all is, what does this have to do with anything? What does it have to do with me?

It brings me to another popular culture term–rat race. In a quick online search, I found this soul-crushing definition on Wikipedia, “A rat race is a metaphor used to describe an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit.” Or working endlessly is pointless because humans all die anyway. It’s very ecclesiastical, like saying “everything is meaningless, like chasing after the wind.” It’s the nihilistic approach to life

Now here’s the fun part–I’m the rat race king. While I certainly don’t have a jam-packed schedule, I do feel like I’m chasing my tail. I’m in a race with myself and I’m always winning. And losing. I win when I achieve my goals and I lose when I realize there’s still more I could do. It’s a self-defeating cycle no matter how accomplished I become because I could always be “more.” The thing with always wanting to be more is that it often makes me believe I’m not enough.

Each thing I try to do is one rat running a maze. If I’m working on ten things, there are ten rats in my maze. Eventually each rat gets trapped in the same corner. In an attempt to frantically escape for fear of death (or worse, failure,) the rats become hopelessly entangled, starved and exhausted, hearts barely beating.

It’s bleak.

There’s a better way. I can live a rat-less life, which not being a fan of wild rats, I prefer. I can choose to make realistic, achievable, and measured goals (or even SMART goals.) I can’t make a book deal happen or get my social media numbers in the hundreds of thousands, but I can show up. More importantly, I can promise myself not to do all the things at once. Not only will the quality of my work suffer, but it causes burnout.

As someone whose creativity fuels my worklife, I can’t afford burnout. Words need fire. I can’t become the rat race king and live the life of a creative. I need something in my gas tank.

The pressure to write, edit, create content and engage on social media, build relationships with other writers online and in the community, and work paying gigs is a lot. It’s manageable until I get into the rat trap of comparison. There are others getting book deals, overflowing with followers, making great content, and doing it all. Of course, that’s a curated look into someone’s world. The reality is probably different; the reality might be a rat king.

Enough with the rats. I deserve better than a life of vermin.

Instead, I’m a magical pegasus, flying with my feathery wings on clouds of hope, and reaching the stars. Okay, that’s a little too lofty.

How about a determined tortoise? I will continue moving forward, climbing over rocks, and walking no matter how long it takes. Unless there’s a dandelion, because my tortoises love those. They also like to take naps.

I’ll be a tortoise that moves ahead, stops for snacks, and takes naps. That seems a lot more achievable. Plus, the tortoise is the one who wins the race in the end.

It was the Amish (well, Mennonite) love story I never saw coming…and I was the main female love interest.

It started when I drove 20 minutes into the country to a Mennonite market I’ve shopped at for years. When I walked into the greenhouse, I was greeted by not one or two, but eight Welsh Corgi puppies. Being an enthusiastic dog lover, I scooped one up a puppy and took a selfie as he snuggled into my shoulder.

I WAS IN LOVE!

Our romance was brief. He was emotionally needy, expected me to pay for all his food, lodging and medical care, and he didn’t even know how to use a toilet. A cute face can turn a head, but it’s meant for a long-term relationship.

Plus, I already have two dogs of my own.

I felt like the bravest girl in the world when I put that puppy down to shop for flowers—the actual reason I was there.

But I was constantly drawn back to the puppies. The pleasure center of my brain was lit up as I watched the them wrestle around in plastic planters and hide among the fauna.

Other customers were similarly smitten with the pups, including one 17-year-old girl who begged her parents to buy her one of the Corgis. I gave her a pep talk as I was perused the annuals. “Tell your parents a puppy will help you learn responsibility as you enter adulthood,” I said conspiratorially.

Her parents finally gave in and the teen walked out with a puppy in her arms, her mother telling her that she better take care of it.

Puppies, am I right?

I wish I could take all of you on a field trip to the country for magical puppy cuddles, but I can’t. So I’m going to post pictures of puppies and invite you to close your eyes and imagine you’re smelling their puppy breath, stroking their unbelievably soft fur, and feeling their warm body in your arms.

It’s been a long week; we all deserve some puppy pics, so here you go…

I’ve lived in my house for almost 12 years and for six of those years, I was certain that my next door neighbors didn’t like me. Our first infraction was putting rocks around our mailbox and the second was putting in a white vinyl fence for the dog. While the husband didn’t seem to care, his wife definitely did. Whenever I offered a friendly hello, the wife would ignore me. Eventually, I stopped greeting her. It seemed kinder to leave her alone than force an interaction.

Until the day I saw an adorable roly poly chocolate lab puppy running around in their yard.

It was love at first sight.

For me, and probably them as well.

It took less than 24 hours for me to ask if I could pet her. A couple of months later, we added them to our Christmas cookie delivery list. Nothing says friendship like carbohydrates.

A year later, I got a new dog–a mini-goldendoodle I named Jovie after the passing of my 14-year-old Shih Tzu, Maddy. Maddy didn’t spend a lot of time outside, but Jovie constantly wanted to roam the yard. She didn’t care that it was January. Besides, if the neighbor’s dog was out, she needed to be out.

One winter day, both dogs were on their leashes in front of our houses. They saw each other without a fence between them and squealed. I don’t know how else to describe the noise of glee. The lab leaped through a mound of snow to get to our small puppy. They fell together, paws and noses touching. It was like something out of a Hallmark movie. You know, if they made Hallmark movies about dog friendships.

As it turned out, we actually had something to talk about–our dogs and all the silly things they liked to do. As we talked about the dogs, we also talked about ourselves–where we grew up, how we spent our days, and what kinds of flowers we were planting.

Then I got another dog–a rescued cavapoo puppy I named Kobie–and then they got a golden retriever puppy, which meant we spent even more time outside chatting while our dogs raced each other up and down the fence line.

We baked our neighbors dog biscuits and they cleared part of our sidewalk when it snowed. We got our sofa stuck in the stairwell when we were trying to remove it from the basement (because we don’t know how to pivot) and the father and son helped us dislodge it and get it upstairs to go out for the trash.

Last summer the mom and I exchanged phone numbers and now regularly text one another if there’s some neighborhood tea to spill or to send each other cute pet pictures. She even tells me if there’s something I might like at HomeGoods. We often wander into the backyard for daily chats when the days are warm–our dogs sticking their wet noses through the fence posts to get petted.

A few weeks ago, I dragged our lightly used dog pool out of the shed and gifted it to my neighbor since my dogs refused to use it. I smiled when just two days ago her dogs jumped in it to cool off during an unseasonably warm May day.

Maybe we would’ve eventually become friends anyway. Our twin houses are literally connected to one another. But our dogs were the unifying force. We aren’t on guard around dogs or worry about saying or doing the wrong thing. When we let down our defenses to interact with cute puppies, we realized their owners weren’t what we thought. Maybe we even sort of liked them.

The house on the other side was just sold and we’ve all been eagerly anticipating what sort of people will now live there. One thing on which my neighbor and I wholeheartedly agree–we hope they like dogs.

A few months after my mother died, I picked up the book The Dead Mom’s Club: A Memoir About Death, Grief, and Surviving the Mother of All Losses by Kate Spencer.

But I never read it.

I tried my best. I liked Kate Spencer’s style and her strong voice. She said the things out loud with which I wrestled with in the dark. It was too hard and too raw to handle the author’s pain as I struggled to make sense of my own.

The title is what lured me in–Dead Mom’s Club. It’s a club no one wants to join, yet membership is thrust upon us. I’m coming up on my ninth Mother’s Day in the club and within the last month two good friends have also received their membership cards.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Mother’s Day sucks for us. And it is everywhere!.

It’s in my inbox. I mean, even my local library sent an email wishing me a happy Mother’s Day. There are commercials, signs, banners, and sales all to remind us to get Mom a gift and a card. If someone forgets about Mother’s Day, they must live in a remote part of the Amazon Rainforest because Mother’s Day permeates everything. It is inescapable.

When I still believed I might have children, Mother’s Day made me feel like a failure. Not only had I not procured a husband, but my uterus wasn’t doing its job. I never subscribed to the idea that a woman’s place was in the home, barefoot and pregnant. My own mother worked full-time as a kindergarten teacher. Still, I felt like my life was lacking year after year.

It got harder when my relationship with my mother became strained. I always sent her a present whether she was speaking to me or not. After all, she gave me residency in her body for nine months. She was still my mother and I loved her.

Then she died and Mother’s Day lost its meaning entirely. For the first few years, BFF Sarah and I planned our yearly vacation to start that weekend. It was better for us to drive down to Chincoteague Island, to start a new tradition.

Now being motherless and childless at 46-years-old, Mother’s Day is like a fly buzzing around my living room; it’s annoying and I want it to go away. No matter how many times I swat at it, it doesn’t go away. Everyone else is celebrating and I feel like an outsider trying to understand how I ended up single and alone.

Am I wallowing in self-pity? Maybe a little, but I think I earned it.

To be honest, this year I feel cathartic about my own life, but I have empathy for my friends who lost their mothers in recent weeks. The first few Mother’s Days are punches to the gut, especially if you go to church and hear the Mother’s Day sermons.

So if you’re in the Dead Moms Club or one of the adjacent clubs, I am so sorry. You are not alone in your grief; there are thousands, maybe even millions of us who are hurting because of the mothers we lost or the children we never had. There were things we still needed to learn from our moms and things we wanted to teach our never-born kids.

I don’t have a magical resolution, no words that will make any of this feel better, but I can listen. Because that’s what we do in the Dead Moms Club, once our grief isn’t all-consuming, we bear witness to one another’s journeys and cry with the new members as they join us in one of the worst clubs in the world.

Thinking of you and praying for you this weekend. I mean it. I even have the membership card to prove it.

It’s like we’re stuck in an abusive relationship we can’t escape.

Even if we moved to Canada or Norway or Australia, the far-reaching consequences of Donald Trump’s actions will affect us there, too. As a Canadian friend told me in 2020, when Americans vote, they vote for the whole world. It’s not because of the overinflated responsibility the United States has to police the world; it’s more because we’re already in a powerful position and our actions affect the whole.

And the whole is a terrifying nightmare from which we cannot wake.

It reminds me of my mom’s marriage to her second husband, herein known as “Number 2.” Number 2 charmed his way first into her life and then entangled the rest of our family. I learned early on that my mother was now “his wife first” and my mom second.

He would demean my mother and me. Despite being over 400 pounds, he called me a “fat b*tch,” told me I was crazy and lazy, and when my mom died he would get everything and I’d get nothing. My mom stood by him, even “not remembering” things she saw with her own eyes, like when he shoved her and then attacked me.

After seven years of this, she finally decided to leave him and that’s when I learned the extent of his abuse, both verbal and sexual.

It was unbelievable to see an intelligent, educated woman get swallowed up by this mess of a human, who I later learned was a convicted felon. Yup, he even “found Jesus” in prison and used spiritual talk to manipulate everyone around him.

Do you see the connection here? Spiritual manipulative, sexual and verbal abuse, gaslighting, abuse, and control. Number Two and Trump aren’t all that different, despite being different in their upbringings, looks, and wealth.

An abuser is an abuser no matter how you dress him up.

Like my mom, most of Trump’s sycophants refuse to see him for who he really is. Some of them are blinded by fear of “left-wing radicals” and their policies. Others can’t grapple with a changing world that includes all skin colors, not just the pale ones. Change is hard, but it is also a constant. Still some refuse to accept that. There have to be some people who like his policies, like the rich whose coffers are filled with the blood, sweat, and tears of the working poor.

Basically, Trump supporters are deluded by his cult of personality or are benefiting in some way from his presidency, maybe both.

I love that for them; I hate it for the rest of us.

Our nervous systems cannot handle this sustained level of stress. Last week Trump threatened to commit mass genocide and this week he’s got a beef with the Pope while also AI cosplaying as Jesus Christ.

It’s too much.

Whenever my phone takes too long to load a webpage, I panic that a foreign country has attacked our infrastructure. My lights went out for thirty seconds last week and I sat in the dark wondering if this was the end. I understand as a highly imaginative person with crippling anxiety disorder my reactions might be more extreme than most people’s.

But I didn’t choose this; I didn’t even vote for it. I’m not even sure most who voted for Trump chose this. Yet here we are. All of us.

So…what can we do? How do we sustain ourselves until our abuser loses his power?

I find it helpful to be honest about where we are as a country, who we’re dealing with as constituents, and to scream out into the void, even if no one hears me. Hopefully someone does and screams back. It’s comforting not to scream alone.

The bravest thing you and I can do is keep going. Remember the pandemic? If anything taught us we can do hard things, it was that. Now more than ever we need each other.

I need a steady supply of emotional support Cheez Balls so I can continue to chip away at my rom-com.

Because we all need a happily ever after, now more than ever.

Yesterday, like usual, I got up, fed my pets and sobbed on the sofa for 20 minutes until I ate breakfast.

The crying wasn’t part of my daily routine.

I’m all for experiencing my emotions, but 8:00 a.m. on a Wednesday wasn’t a great time and place–not when I had to get to my aqua aerobics class, write, and go to therapy, where it is appropriate to cry.

But I can’t always control when and where I’m going to let loose. I supposed a random Wednesday is as good a place as any to break down. Because I so often forget that crying is a good and healthy release. Emotions are meant to be felt.

I’ve just come to hate them. My whole life I’ve been too much. Too many feelings, opinions, ideas, just too much. So as I’ve matured, I’ve tried to reign it all in. I don’t want to be too much because maybe it makes people run screaming in the other direction.

I’m too much and that’s never been a good thing.

It’s why I shove my grief deep down. Sure, I’ll talk about grief from an emotional distance, but I don’t like to feel it.. I don’t want it to permeate my thoughts. I allow myself to tear up for a moment and then I moved on. Because that’s what everyone tells you to do with grief—you just move on.

But that’s harder to move on when unresolved grief–the kind I feel with my father’s death–is breaking my heart. It’s been 16 months since he died, so maybe I’m expecting too much of myself. I don’t yet have his personal effects, tangible pieces of my dad’s life to remind me he really existed, but that’s a whole other story. There’s no place to go with my grief. His body was cremated and so his remains are in a blue urn in his partner’s house. There’s no final resting place, no gravestone by which to lay flowers or tiny turtle toys.

The best idea I can do is take care of my tortoises as he would’ve taken care of the ones he owned years ago. I’m working on a rom-com novel inspired by his work with turtles and tortoises. I’m finding ways to honor and remember him in ways I wished I had when he was still alive, but that’s complicated, too.

As Easter approaches, my days have been more tearful and it’s been harder to lock those feelings away. I don’t remember last Easter. The only thing I remember is taking pictures of Tytus the Russian tortoise on his first Easter with me because I still have the evidence on my phone. (See above photo.)

It’s Easter 2024 that haunts me because it’s the last Easter I spent with my dad. He was in a rehabilitation center working on gaining strength after a stint in the hospital. When I first walked into his room, I was jarred by the thick compression vest he wore. Every time I visited, all I saw was that vest–strapped to his abdomen like a ticking time bomb. It was a constant reminder of his congestive heart failure and worsening Parkinson’s disease.

I made him an Easter basket with Reese’s peanut butter eggs (his favorite,) some slices of homemade Ukrainian Easter bread, and a few other treats. One of my strongest convictions is that no one is ever too old for an Easter basket and seeing the smile on my dad’s face proved I was right.

Then eight months later on a Tuesday in December, he was gone. Dead. A memory in my mind.

Spring always reminds me that death isn’t the end. The vibrant colors of autumn give way to the cold, dark days of winter. Then the daylight hangs around a little longer and the days seem more sunny than gray. The dead grass sprouts little pops of green and the crocuses pop out of the earth. The world is coming alive again.

It wasn’t dead, but merely sleeping.

It reminds me of a story found in the gospels when Jesus comes upon a girl who has died after an illness. He tells a grieving family that she’s not dead, she’s merely sleeping. It’s a weird thing to say to a group of people who are sobbing and wailing. But then Jesus brought her back to life, much to the joy of her family.

She was not dead, but merely sleeping.

That’s what I’m trying to wrap my mind around this Holy Week. Death is not the end because of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. Easter is the ultimate reminder that is but the end of this story, but life goes on. There’s a never-ending sequel.

My dad isn’t dead; he’s merely sleeping, at least in my world.

I wait for the day when glory will unfold, like the daisies, bee balm, and coneflowers, who are crispy brown remnants of their former selves in autumn, completely disappear under a foot of snow in the winter, until their buried bulbs send forth lush green shoots in spring unfurling their blooms of snow white, pink, and purple in June and throughout the rest of the summer.

Not only does Easter remind me of resurrection, but creation itself belts it each and every spring.

I chose to rise up from my sofa, blow my nose, and splash water on my face. I can be sad, but I need to move on with my life, reminding myself I can hold my sorrow in one hand and my hope in the other.

I walked outside to take in the trashcan after Wednesday morning’s trash collection and the daffodils in my back garden caught my eyes–bright yellow breaking up the weeds.

The flowers aren’t dead; they were merely sleeping.

Tortoises don’t hibernate; they brumate.

To be more exact, tortoises who don’t live year-round in warmer climates brumate.

What is brumation? Instead of hunkering down, like bears and other mammals, tortoises burrow into their earth and to stick their heads out of the ground on warmer days. Sometimes they come all the way out to sun, disappearing again when the temperature drops. Safe underground, the animal’s metabolism, heart rate, and digestion slow conserving its energy throughout the winter months. The cold-blooded animals need heat and sunlight to digest their food and absorb vitamins from the sun to grow. Plus, the weeds, grasses, and flowers they eat aren’t readily available in winter. Brumation allows them to survive.

Like the tortoise, I also brumate in January and February, except I want to eat to curb the depression eating away at my soul. I poke my head out when I need to, but the rest of the time I’m satisfied safe in my little hobbit hole bemoaning the cold and counting down the days until spring.

This was a particularly tough brumation for me and it wasn’t until last week at therapy I could pin down why.

In an effort for self-preservation, I haven’t delved too far into my emotions for the past 15 months–since my father died. I allowed myself moments of grief, which is the only way through losing a loved one.

The other things remain ignored, like my inability to eat many foods due to an adverse reaction to a medication that continues to this day, even after extensive testing of my GI tract. I’m struggling with physical issues relating to my hypermobility, receiving procedures, injections, and multiple rounds of physical therapy. Beyond the physical, I’ve struggled with the mental health conditions with which I live.

I left a position I loved at a volunteer organization due to irreconcilable differences.. It has still left me in a void. I’ve shied away from getting involved in any new groups or volunteerism.

What didn’t come out until last week, despite being mentioned in passing, was the rejection of my first novel by 50 agents.

Yup, five-zero.

Perhaps I was too eager sending out query letters in February and March 2025, but I desperately needed a win. I wanted to prove I could still move forward, even with the scathing loss of my father only a few months prior. I knew the odds in publishing, but I was going to beat the odds.

Except I didn’t.

Pouring one’s life into a manuscript–all 82,000 words of it–is a lot of work. I showed up day after day, writing, editing, revising, and reading again until my eyes went dry, until I couldn’t see straight. Then I wrote a book proposal and the query letter. Next I researched agents before finally sending off the query letter, hoping against hope I’ll be one of the fortunate writers who makes it.

Except I wasn’t.

I tried to shrug it off. It wasn’t my time. But what my parents’ deaths taught me is that time isn’t guaranteed. Lots of people die before their dreams are ever realized. I suppose I’d be dead so my aspirations wouldn’t matter anymore, but in this time and place, they DO matter.

So a week ago I was talking to my therapist about my reluctance to dive into my third book, a rom-com involving reptiles. While I love the concept of the book, there’s a lot of research involved and I’m not confident in my ability to write kissing scenes, even though the book is clean, closed-door fiction. Plus, it’s so much work to even get the thing written, much less do everything else to again be rejected by 50 agents.

Perhaps I’m not as good a writer as I think I am. Maybe I should bury myself in the dirt and forget about trying because it’s all for nothing. I voiced all these thoughts to my therapist, who looked at me compassionately, and said, “You’ve had a lot of grief and loss over the past year. It all came at once and that would hurt anyone.”

At this point, I was ugly crying. I loudly blew my nose and said through sobs, “You know, I don’t think I ever grieved not having my book picked up by an agent. It feels like this gaping wound I refuse to acknowledge.” It’s there and it hurts.

Once I voiced it outloud, something burst inside of me. I definitely had an emotional hangover, yet the next day ideas for my next book began to flow. I did a bit more research and made a few contacts to help me sort out the plot.

Like a tortoise, I started to come out of the ground where I brumated to seek the warmth of the sun, knowing that life was only a bit above me if I simply reached for it.

Humans weren’t made to brumate or hibernate; I was made to experience all four seasons to engage in life with others. There are times I may need more me-time, but that shouldn’t be the norm. Ignoring what’s burning inside me only hinders me instead of helping me. Hiding only makes the wound septic.

Now that spring is upon us, my heart feels lighter. The leaves of the i rises in my landscaping are turning green and purple crocuses are popping up in my neighborhood. I have yet to spot a robin, but I’ve heard them in my yard. Life has come back to the world.

Life has come back to me, too, so I reach for the light, clawing through my self-isolation and like a tortoise, I rise from brumation to bask in the sun.

I don’t know Savannah Guthrie. I’ve never watched her on the “Today” show. I didn’t know where she was from or her mother’s name. Until Sunday.

That’s what the world learned Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy, went missing from her Tuscon, AZ home without her phone, car, or medication. Like many, I became engrossed with the developments in the case–how does an elderly woman with mobility issues simply vanish from her home in the middle of the night? Clues keep trickling out from reputable and not-so-reputable news sources, like TMZ.

But why? Why do we care so much?

Perhaps it’s because we think we know Savannah Guthrie. After all, she is a public figure with a warm, bubbly, and engaging personality. She’s called her mother her “best friend” and her mom was a guest on the “Today” show.

If something heinous like this could happen to someone famous like Savannah Guthrie, that means it could happen to anyone. And that makes us feel vulnerable. I mean, someone could break into my house in the wee hours of the morning and kidnap me. My loved ones would be waiting days, weeks, months, maybe even years to learn what happened to me. Worse still, they may never get an answer.

Or it could happen to a loved one, like a mother. My mind flashed back to the phone call when my mother told me she had stage 4 cancer. Then ten days later my phone rang again and I learned from her husband she was dead. I was both relieved her death was short and relatively painless and devastated knowing she was gone.

I can’t help but wonder where Savannah Guthrie was when she got the phone call that forever changed her life in an instant. Perhaps packing to head to the Winter Olympics, where she was set to co-host the opening ceremony. Did she drop to her knees and sob knowing she now faced a scary, unknown future? What does she do now when the phone rings?

Some of us know what it’s like to lose a parent and we wouldn’t wish that grief on anyone else, least of all Savannah Guthrie. We don’t want our parents or grandparents to die, but when the time comes, we want our loved ones to go peacefully and gently, simply to fall asleep and wake up somewhere better, not to suffer.

We still don’t know what happened to Nancy Guthrie, but it doesn’t look good, especially since she’s been out of her life-sustaining medication for days. We fear the worst, but hope Savannah and Nancy Guthrie will be miraculously reunited.

So we wait and we pray and we hope because we are well aware the world is a dark place, especially right now. We are desperate for some good news, even in the wake of the terrible trauma Nancy Guthrie has already experienced.

When we see pictures of Nancy Guthrie, we see our 84-year-old mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and neighbors. Nancy isn’t just Savannah Guthrie’s mom; she is now America’s mom and we need her to come home.

Every morning it’s the same routine. I take out the leafy greens for the tortoises and set them on the counter. I clean Tilly’s dishes–she’s my seven-month-old Hermann’s tortoise–and give her fresh water and food. Then I run a tortoise-sized salad up to Tytus, my adult Russian tortoise, and change his water. Once I’m back downstairs, Arrow the cockatiel gets fresh water, food, and maybe a little seed. Only after all the “small pets” are taken care of do I feed myself.

Usually I eat a banana, which I share with my two dogs, and gulp down a protein drink. My dogs settle next to be (or on me) and I start my day watching Stephen Colbert, crocheting, journaling, or writing.

Then the dogs need to be let out approximately 894 times. They also like to bark at absolutely everything. They’ve even formed an alliance with our neighbor’s dogs. If one of them barks, all of them bark. It’s an effective alert system to warn us of threats like a man jogging down the street, a lady with a baby stroller, a family walking their dog, any sort of delivery to any house on our block.

I don’t know how people live without pets because I can’t function without mine. They are the reason I get up every morning. BFF Sarah feeds the dogs, but the small pet care is up to me and believe me–the small pets care. If the tortoises aren’t fed by 8:30 a.m. they stand on their feeding slates waiting for me to give them their daily green. Arrow’s a bit more patient as she loudly chirps to announce my arrival into the living room.

I like watching my tortoises eat dandelion, lettuce, collard greens, and other crunchy foods. They get pretty jazzed about salads without dressing. They make a crisp crunching sound as they tear into their mustard greens. And I find that noise so satisfying.

Jovie, my mini-goldendoodle, is very extra. Everyone she’s ever met is her best friend and she doesn’t hold back her affection. She has boundless enthusiasm for her favorite games–fetch and tug. She could happily play for hours. As annoying as she can be, like when she wakes me up at 4 a.m. to be held or drops her ball into the middle of one of my crochet projects, she’s easily the smartest and funniest dog I’ve ever owned.

Kobie’s more chill. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s a boy or because he’s a cavapoo. Still, he has his moments. Whenever he wants attention–usually when we sit down to eat dinner–he gets into mischief. One of his favorite things to do is fish a blu-ray out of the storage baskets at the bottom of the entertainment center. It’s not some random blu-ray; it’s always Pitch Perfect. Always. We like to joke it’s his favorite movie, though when we watched it, he fell asleep.

The first time I talked to my therapist at our virtual appointment she asked, “Do you have a bird? I keep hearing something chirping.” I sat on my sofa next to Arrow’s cage, not even realizing she was adding her own bits to our conversation. My cockatiel’s chatter has become such a part of my life, I only notice the silence.

From the time I get up in the morning to care for my tortoises and bird until the time I go to bed with a book in my hands and a dog (Jovie) at my side, my life falls into a gentle rhythm around my pets’ care and company.

When I’m having a trauma trigger, I sit on the floor and say, “Jovie, get your ball.” She’s more than happy to scurry over with her favorite ball of the week. Kobie seems to sense when I’m anxious or upset and nudges my arm until I put it around him. My dogs are, by far, more empathetic than my other pets, but the other pets serve a purpose, too.

The tortoises ground me, have helped me find creative ways to get them the nutrition they need in the winter months (which is why I bought an AeroGarden,) and challenged me to make their enclosures enriching and suitable for them. It’s a whole science and I’ve learned so much in tortoise Facebook groups (yes, they exist.)

Here in the middle of winter–the holidays behind us and more than six weeks of winter ahead of us–I need my animals more than ever. I don’t have natural sunlight, but I do have LED lamps to warm my tortoises and to grow their plants. I can’t go for walks in the park, but I can play fetch for three hours every night (Sigh.) The songbirds flew south for the winter, but I have a cockatiel who will tweet and bob her head to her favorite tunes, “Sucker” by The Jonas Brothers and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (but only the Brenda Lee version.)

Being an empathetic human is sometimes hard in the best of times, but right now, it’s even harder. Getting out of bed seems like a major obstacle, forget getting anything accomplished. It doesn’t seem fair that I should be expected to show up on time for appointments, do my laundry, and brush my teeth when the world is on fire. Maybe I could even let those things slide. What I can’t ignore is the needs of my animals, who remind me of what is good in this world.

Plus, animals are hilarious.

My pets delight and amuse me every day, and so do other people’s pets. I have a friend named Jenny whose black lab, Joey, writes hilarious Facebook posts in all CAPS. Chris Leone at Garden State Tortoise (where I got Tilly) makes videos about the odd and amusing behaviors of his very friendly box turtle, Otis. There is a plethora of other animal content out on the Internet from elk giving serious side-eye to tourists who try to pet them to unlikely animal friendships. If you’ve got a cute pet, you can make viral social media content. Because animals make us laugh.

In a world where darkness feels like it’s pervading everything, we need animals now more than ever–to provide structure to our day, to comfort us and provide companionship, to show us that playing fetch is the answer to every problem, and to remind us there is good in this world. I am convinced animals are God’s gift to humanity and it’s a gift we desperately need right now.

Author, speaker, and devout Jesus follower Philip Yancey confessed to having an extra-marital affair–an eight-year-long one. Calling it an affair is being generous; it was a full-fledged undercover relationship while Yancey continued speaking and writing about faith and spirituality–pissing off evangelicals and delighting the liberal-learning crowd.

Many of us feel betrayed. It’s not that another Christian leader went down; it’s that it’s Philip Yancey! The one who taught us what’s so amazing about grace, about the Jesus we never knew, and so beautifully wrestled through racism, legalism, social issues, and doubt. He brought his journalistic background and his vulnerability into his books. So many of us grew in our faith or even still have faith because of him. We learned faith and doubt can co-exist, that perhaps part of life here on the fallen planet is to always live in the tension between the two.

Then came the betrayal. Not only did Philip Yancey cheat on his wife of 55 years; he cheated on all of us who admired his faith and his body of work. I tend not to put Christian leaders on pedestals anymore because the fall from grace always happens. I expect people to make mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and move on with God’s grace.

But this mistake was one he made over and over and over again making it not so much as a mistake, but a lifestyle choice. All the times he didn’t come home because his “meeting ran late” or he was “with a friend for coffee”, he was actually with the other woman, who was also married. Two families torn asunder because of one repeated decision–a lifestyle choice– by both parties. The name of Yancey’s mistress has been kept quiet, but I can only imagine her family is spiraling as well.

Because of the scandal, the 76-year-old retired from ministry and committed himself to making things right with his wife Janet and his Lord and Savior. He took responsibility for his actions and that’s commendable. In a statement included in the Christianity Today article, Janet said she is in “unfathomable pain,” but is committed to working things out.

Of course, many people have shared opinions about this on Substack and social media condemning Philip Yancey’s behavior, as they should. Some were willing to offer immediate forgiveness, because hey, we all make mistakes. Others were willing to start GoFundMe’s so Janet could pay for a divorce. We all react differently, I suppose.

There were a few comments I couldn’t shake–the ones saying Philip Yancey’s 2023 Parkinson’s disease diagnosis was due to his infidelity and he deserved it.

I was so stunned I couldn’t even respond, not like I would’ve been able to with the hot tears blurring my vision.

Don’t.

Don’t you say that.

You cannot say something like that until you have watched someone you love slowly lose function of their body and even their mind because of Parkinson’s. Don’t speak a word until you watch that person struggle to hold a spoon to eat dinner and spill it all over himself like a two-year-old. Hold your tongue until you see the person who you once thought the strongest in the world sitting in his own urine-soaked adult diaper–the stench of his pee filling the room.

Put your hand over your mouth because that man was my daddy, who died on December 3, 2024 from the complications of Parkinson’s disease, believed to be accelerated by his covid infection.

You don’t know what you’re saying when you wish Parkinson’s on someone or blame the diagnosis on their sins. There are plenty of people who’ve done far worse than Philip Yancey or my father and some of them are running the country.

Not only did my father share a diagnosis with Yancey, he also had an affair, which not only destroyed my parents’ marriage, but broke my heart. I was 19, so I wasn’t shielded from the cold, hard facts. At any age, nothing could prepare me for the thing I never saw coming from the person I loved most in the world.

The next 25 years were strained. At first, I barely spoke to my father or returned his calls. It was too hard, plus he was living with HER–the woman he left my mom for. Eventually, my anger subsided and the estrangement ended. I got to know HER and discovered she had a name, a love for animals, and was actually a lovely person. Our relationship had its ups and downs. There were periods where we talked and months when no one communicated at all.

Because months would pass between my visits with my father, the growing effects of his Parkinson’s were evident. He’d shake more than he used to, then he used a cane, a walker, a lift chair, and a hospital bed. Eventually, palliative care became hospice care until he started to lose control of his mental faculties. Sometimes he saw monkeys climbing on the lamp or though the vacuum cleaner was his old guitar he needed to practice. Friends, he never played guitar, but at least he seemed happy.

Then he was gone. Again. This time forever.

I don’t think he forgave himself for having an affair or the pain he caused my mother and me. To his dying breath, he lived that shame, even though we assured him that he was forgiven by us and by God. His companion of 25 years–yes, HER–lovingly took care of my father to the end, even remembering to buckle his watch to his wrist every day. It was a little bit of dignity while living with a terribly undignified disease.

It’s hard to say what was worse–the Parkinson’s or the shame, though I believe one affected the other, not through causation, rather the holistic nature of our mind-body-soul connection.

As I think about Philip Yancey, I know what’s ahead for him on his Parkinson’s journey. I know the sacrifices his wife still seems willing to make to care for her husband, though no one would blame her for divorcing him. In fact, some would prefer that.

I hate that Philip Yancey had an eight-year-old relationship with a married woman. I hate what they both did to their families and what Yancey did to those of us who saw him as a spiritual father.

I hate it.

Because it reminds me of how my father did the same thing and what it cost me.

I believe it’s why I’m still single at 45. No one could compare to the father I knew and everyone could hurt, lie, and betray me like the father I thought I knew.

But he never stopped loving me and I never stopped loving him.

I only wish he had allowed himself the amazing grace of which Philip Yancey wrote so eloquently, and I hope that one day, Yancey finds it, too.

For now, we all need to take a beat and heal because we were all betrayed for eight years and that hurts.

January 2 is the hardest day of the year.

It stalks me like a mountain lion as the new year approaches. I unwrap Christmas presents and have fleeting thoughts of the new year. I ignore them and make my feelings with extra loud screeches of enthusiasm for my new Lord of the Rings Funko Pops.

I count down the days left of my holiday respite. The anxiety is already there when I wake up each morning. I’m one day closer to *that* day.

I didn’t have time to finish the Taylor Swift documentary “The End of an Era, which is really good. Or the new season of “Emily in Paris” in which Emily, a human trainwreck, does more human trainwreckish things in ridiculously fashionable outfits. I didn’t even watch “The Great Christmas Light Fight” this year. I mean, last year.

And January 2 had the nerve to come anyway.

We all get a pass on January 1, right? It’s still a holiday and that pork and sauerkraut isn’t going to eat itself. I’ll still be munching on what’s left of the stale Christmas cookies. Kraut was never my thing.

On January 2, it’s time to get serious–back to work, back to school, back to my regularly scheduled programming. The schedule I need to give my life structure is thrown aside once or twice a year and I despise its return.

I’m never ready for it, but some years the transition from holiday to everyday is a little easier. This year it’s not. I think it’s because 2025 was my own personal trainwreck, but not the fun “Emily in Paris” kind. It twisted metal, busted out windows, screaming, groaning, and crawling away from the site of the accident bloodied and bruised wondering if I would die there on the side of the tracks. It might’ve been one of, if not the most, difficult year of my life.

I don’t greet the new year with enthusiasm. I ask myself, “What will I have to endure this year and will I survive it?”

This is why I’m glad I’m not a fortune teller; I can’t handle knowing what’s going to happen. It’s outside my realm of control, which kicks up my anxiety. Even now I feel like I have a raging bronco in my amygdala screaming, “DO SOMETHING! YOU ARE NOT SAFE!”

But there’s nothing to do. There is simply going on.

I guess there are things to do, like all those things I put off until after the holidays, like scheduling physical therapy for my knee–again. Which means I’ll have to actually talk to someone on the phone. Ugh.

I’m going to outline and write my third novel, which feels hard and a little pointless. I mean, no one published the first two…yet.

I need to take my health more seriously because as hard as it is to have a body, I need to treat it well. I used to be so good at it and then the pandemic happened. My therapist said my trauma response was thinking nothing I did for myself mattered anymore because life could end in an instant. In 2026, I’ll learn to be good at it again. Otherwise, I’m living to die, instead of living to live.

Part of me wants to already be at the end of 2026 and looking back on what I accomplished–did I write the book or kiss a guy? I want to know I made it. Next year at this time, in all likelihood I’ll be counting down the days until January 2, 2027 and dread it as much as I dread today.

So here we are–you and me–and it’s January 2. Neither of us can prevent the persistence of time, but we can embrace it. We can make those appointments, do those things, and even make room for new things, even uncomfortable things.

Then as the days of 2026 wane again we can celebrate all the things we did and mourn all we lost. Both things hold weight and importance.

And January 2 will come again and we will welcome it with a grimace because it is, after all, the hardest day of the year. But we will make it through anyway.

I wrote this many years ago, but am sharing it again because it’s a light, fluffy reminder of Christmasses past. Check out my note at the bottom for a special end to this story.

Today I broke down and bought “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on DVD. It seems ludicrous to spend $10 on a cartoon that is only 25 minutes long. But it’s not just about the cartoon; it is about reviving vivid childhood memories that flood over me while watching Charlie Brown and his sad little tree.

When I was a little girl, my father made me two VHS tapes chock full of classic Christmas cartoons and movies featuring Garfield, Yogi Bear, Buttons and Rusty, Charlie Brown, the Grinch, Rudolph, Frosty, and more. All the good ones were present (and a few not-as-good ones, but I was a kid and didn’t care). I think about my father, VCR remote in hand, making these tapes for me—his little girl—and I am deeply moved. These VHS tapes are long gone, yet this year I would give hundreds of dollars just to hold one in my fickle hands, play it on my antiquated VCR, and watch with delight as Christmas came alive for my young mind. I wish I understood then what those tapes would mean to me 25 years later.

I like “A Charlie Brown Christmas” the most. Who can forget when Linus takes center stage and recites the Christmas story? It’s one of the most beautiful, iconic moments as blanket-carrying, thoughtful Linus shares the KJV version Luke 2:8-14. The musical score, Lucy’s psychology booth, and of course, Charlie Brown’s pathetic Christmas tree add to the beauty of this cartoon. For me, it’s more than that.

While “Charlie Brown” and “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” are my absolute favorites, I like them all because my father introduced them to me through those videos I watched year after year. The video collection itself was an endeavor. To capture commercial-free cartoons, VHS recording meant the viewer would have to stop recording as soon as commercials hit and start recording right before the show came back on to avoid commercial interruption. Dad must have sat there and watched over eight hours of child’s programming because the commercials were carefully edited out. Occasionally, Dad missed a few seconds here and there, so toy commercials from the mid-80’s would break into the narrative. (What little girl didn’t want Voltron?)

I think about my Dad sitting there, maybe when I beckoned him to play with me or when my mother asked him to take out the trash. “No,” he argued. “I’ve got to record this show.” I probably walked away disappointed and my mom probably rolled her eyes. A grown man watching Christmas cartoons—what nonsense! It was love for his daughter that kept him there enduring “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (long with a little childhood nostalgia of his own.)

If I still had these tapes—if they hadn’t been broken with age or angrily trashed before my parents’ divorce—I would watch them once again. Over and over. I would laugh at Yogi Bear and cry with Rudolph (those other reindeer were mean). I would wonder at the mechanics of Claymation and get up to dance with the Peanuts gang as Schroeder rocked out on his mini baby grand. And I would remember, appreciate, and thank God for the gift of these videos.

So I bought “A Charlie Brown Christmas” today, not so I could forget the real meaning of Christmas in a silly, dated cartoon, but so I can remember what Christmas really means to me—a heavenly earthly Father’s love for his beloved child made real in my earthly father’s love for me.

After I wrote and posted this on my blog 10 years ago, I received a mysterious package in the mail. I opened the mystery box to find a handwritten note from my father and the VHS tapes mentioned in this post. I immediately popped one in my VCR/DVD combo player and watched it all—the cartoons, the Voltron and My Buddy commercials—and some part of the childhood magic was restored. Despite no longer having a VCR, I had the VHS tapes because some things are too precious to throw away, even if the rest of the world doesn’t understand why.

What do you want for Christmas?

It should be a simple question, yet it’s surprisingly complex.

The things I want can’t be found under a Christmas tree or suffocated by tissue paper in a glittery bag. It’s not that I don’t want material items, but I would trade them for impractical and impossible wishes, like a date with Trevor Noah (our dinner conversation would be amazing,) my car to be magically paid off, or a chance to see Tom Petty, who died in 2017, in concert. Some things are not just improbable; they’re impossible.

This isn’t a Hallmark movie so I won’t be getting a boyfriend for Christmas or financial security or another day with my father or mother or grandparents. What I really want I can’t have, so everything else feels like a consolation prize.

It’s not just Scrooge who is taunted by the ghosts of Christmases past. So am I.

Christmas was magical when I was a kid. I relished the Christmas Eve service at church, especially singing carols by candlelight and the poinsettias that lined the sanctuary. We’d grab the poinsettias we bought at the end of the service–one for us and one for my grandparents–and head home.

I miss Christmas at church. The lighting of the advent wreath, Christmas songs that are only sung once a year, and the angel tree in the hallway. I always plucked off a paper angel bearing the name, age, and wish list of an underprivileged child and returned my gifts by the deadline.

I remember Christmas brunches with my parents and grandparents, the year my parents hid an acoustic guitar they bought me behind the sofa, and going to visit relatives who had delicious food spreads on their dining room table.

It’s hard to accept that Christmas isn’t what it used to be. I scrunch my eyes shut and hope to be transported to the place where Christmas wishes do come true. So far, it hasn’t happened.

Instead, I need to…no, I choose to accept what is and find joy in my found families, my pets, and the ridiculous Christmas decor that makes me laugh. There’s happiness to be found in new traditions, like BFF Sarah and I delivering boxes of homemade cookies to friends and neighbors on Christmas Eve or watching my dogs unwrap their presents on Christmas morning. Jovie (the mini-goldendoodle), plays with all the toys while Kobie (the cavapoo) plays with the wrapping paper. It’s a win-win for everyone.

I won’t ignore the sadness I carry, whether it be depression, seasonal affect disorder, grief or all three. I will hold joy in one hand–celebrating the season and the birth of Jesus and in the other I will honor my grief. It’s a fine balance between Christmas past and Christmas present.

It’s not so much about what I want for Christmas–because that’s an impossible ask–but appreciating and enjoying what I’ve been given whether in life or under the tree.

And if I happen to get a dinner date with Trevor Noah…well, that would be a Christmas miracle indeed.

*I originally wrote this blog post in the summer of 2012 when I went shopping with my mother at Walmart. Sadly, she was not reincarnated.*

On Wednesday, I accompanied my mom on a shopping excursion to the scourge of all giant retail chains–Walmart. Not just any Walmart, but a SUPER Walmart (though it’s not the biggest, nor super-est Walmart I’ve ever visited. It’s certainly the most unpleasant.)

Since she’s developed an ulcer on the bottom of her foot, she has been forced to wear a boot which makes driving (and walking) difficult. While Mom loaded herself into a motorized cart, she gave me the task of following her with a shopping cart and dubbed me “Lady Amy, Keeper of the Cane.” (That’s a fancy way of saying, “My mom shoved her cane into the shopping cart and told me to push it.”)

It’s hard to keep up with my mom in stores. She starts pushing her shopping cart haphazardly–rushing ahead one moment, stopping the next (without informing her fellow shoppers, who continue on). All this is made worse with an electric cart. My mom was flying through Walmart like she would get a $10,000 prize for “Fastest Disabled Shopper in an Electric Cart.”

Forget trying to look at anything. It was a work-out trying to keep up with Speedy McSpeedster. So I lost my mom. Multiple times. I hate being alone in congested stores like Walmart on busy afternoons, especially when I’m crabby because of the heat and humidity oppressing our region, the screaming kids running up and down and around the aisles, and the ever-changing product locations. Walmart, would it really be too difficult to keep “seasonal” items in the same place every time I shop at your store?

After yelling at some kids who were screaming like howler monkeys as they flicked each other with Martha Stewart brand towels, I sought refuge in the book and magazine section of the store until it was time to check out.

Shopping at Walmart feels like “23 minutes in hell.”

Finally, it was time to check out. Despite having 100 cashier counters, approximately five of them were open—four of which were for 20 items or less. Therefore, I instructed Mom to speed over to the self-check-out. We were about to do what I hated other people doing—buying a multitude of groceries at self-check-out.

I loaded Mom’s items in my vehicle, backed out of my space, and silently prayed I would make it out of the Walmart parking lot without getting into an accident or hitting a pedestrian. The Walmart parking lot is a Wild West of its very own, and I, friends, am not brave enough to pioneer it on a regular basis. Those are the sordid details of my grumpy Walmart adventure—some of which I’m proud of (like telling those annoying kids to stop acting like howler monkeys) and some of which I’m not-so-proud (telling my mom to stop acting like a howler monkey.) All-in-all, I think I learned some valuable lessons here:

1. Electric riding carts should come with a GPS unit that allows daughters to keep track of their free-wheeling mothers.

2. When yelling at other people’s children, expect a confrontation with Momma Bear. Or in this case, “I-Don’t-Care” Momma.

Me: “Your kids are running around screaming. You need to some something.

IDC Momma: “So? They’re my kids. What does it matter to you?” Far off look, as though she sees pink bunnies hopping down the aisle.

Me: “It matters to me because they’re annoying me.” Walk away in a huff. Not the best exemplification of Christ.

3. There is a plentiful selection of Oreos available at Walmart, including the much sought after Mint Oreos, which can be used to make this delicious recipe. My “Oreo Buddies” on Twitter will be overjoyed at this discovery.

4. It is less stressful to drive in New York City at rush hour on a Friday than it is to drive in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

5. Finally, Walmart’s underwear prices really are unbeatable.

Our government reopened almost a week ago.

Thank God.

The government opened, but millions of people still waited days for their SNAP benefits to appear. The vast majority have now received their monthly cash allotment. Yet many, like me, are still not at ease. Vulnerable Americans can’t rely on the government.

But we can only rely on the helpers.

Fred Rogers or Mr. Rogers, as most of us know him, is famously quoted as saying, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

Despite being dependent on government support, I am one of the lucky ones. When I shared about my struggle, people asked how they could help. I made an Amazon Wish List and received package after package from generous people I’ve met online, old friends, and even a few packages from people I don’t even know.

It was overwhelming in the best way possible.

I can’t tell you how many times I broke down crying, unable to believe people were so good to me. This kindness did more than care for my physical needs many times over; it healed part of me that’s been bleeding since I lost my father last December. (Note: My mom’s death day is 11/22/17 and my dad’s is 12/2/24, so the fact this generosity would happen NOW is even more poignant.)

Being an adult orphan with no family contact makes me feel vulnerable. Who would show up for me if things got really tough? It’s BFF Sarah and me against the world, at least that’s how it feels.

At least that’s how it felt until the world decided it would show up as a plentitude of Amazon boxes on my front door step.

A huge thank you to all of you who helped me out during a very scary time just a week ago. You thought you were sending soup or toothpaste, but you were showing me I could survive on the kindness of strangers (and friends aka my found family.)

You were the helpers I didn’t even have the hope to look for and you came running anyway. Thank you for caring for me physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

My inbox is filled with emails from big retailers letting me know their Black Friday deals start now.

And Thanksgiving is still 11 days away.

How will we survive an ever-commercialized shopping season? Most of us can’t avoid it completely, unless we go off into the wilderness and hibernate for the holidays. But we can shop smarter.

Instead of giving billionaires more money to hoard, why not consider shopping simpler, smaller, and/or handcrafted?

One of my side hustles is crocheting items like rustic nativities, hats, scarves, ornaments, wall hangings, and more. I make the vast majority of my income from Whimsical Wears during the last two months of the year. This year I started designing cheeky apparel, which is available exclusively online. Making items to sell, posting on social media about my goods, interacting with customers, and mailing packages is exhausting.

But I love it.

Because I’m disabled, my creativity is one way for me to make a little extra money. At craft fairs, I’ve met single moms trying to sell wreaths they made while breastfeeding a baby, woodworkers who are trying out a new hobby, and many others hoping to make a sale. The craft fair world is tough and there’s stiff competition. Every sale feels good because it’s not just some mass retail product I’m selling, it’s something I made with my hands.

Before you run out to your local superstore to buy a bunch of $5 scarves for the whole family, consider shopping small.

Here are FIVE reasons to hit up your local holiday craft fair instead of big retail:

1. Handcrafted artisans are being swallowed by an ever-increasing marketplace of poor-quality mass consumption. Recently, faux crocheted items were trendy, so people preferred to buy a cheap market bag for $12 at a major retailer than for $20 from me. However, the mass produced bags fell apart while my cotton bags kept going through the washing machine just fine.

2. Whether you choose to shop at an online marketplace or at a craft fair, you often interact with the very person who made the item. And they often delight in telling you the process, even as you try to walk away. That’s pride in quality work.

3. You are buying a one-of-a-kind item that’s perfectly imperfect. I’ve heard that the Amish purposely make mistakes in their beautiful quilts because no one is perfect, except God. Personally, I don’t try to make errors; I just do. But you don’t see them, do you? It’s a fun, little quirk to remind us nothing in nature is perfect, not even our hand-crocheted hats.

4. Time is money, but crafters rarely get a living wage. Here’s where it gets real–handcrafted creations are more expensive than a Kohl’s super sale. That’s because artisans often use better materials, can’t buy wholesale, and aren’t machines that can pump out ten scarves a mitten. For all the work that goes into making items, most of us are lucky to scrape by getting $3-5 an hour after the cost of materials. Sometimes less.

5. You are helping to support someone’s side hustle. I’m a realist when it comes to crafting. I know this will never be a full-time job. If I had any doubts, blowing out my right arm this spring from tennis elbow showed me nothing is forever–not even crocheting. But as someone who does live with a disability, selling during the holiday season enabled me to buy a baby Hermann’s tortoise (yay Tilly,) pay for an entire root canal process, and escape to Corning, NY when I thought I was going to lose my mind in July.

I am grateful to every customer and repeat customer that chooses me to make a gift for a loved one. Sometimes I even send the gift to the receiver myself and handwrite a note from the giver. I usually throw in something a little extra, like a candy cane or an ornament after carefully wrapping the item in festive tissue paper.

I value what I make and I value those who buy it and receive it, which is why I’ll go the extra mile for you. So many crafters do because not only do we enjoy creating, we love making it for you.

**If you want to see my items, here are some links:**

Whimsical Wears Crochet (most recent creations on IG or FB.)

FB: https://www.facebook.com/whimsicalwears77

IG: https://www.instagram.com/whimsicalwears77

Limited Catalog: https://amysondova.com/store-page-3/

You can check out my shirt, hoodies, mugs and stickers at…

Fourth Wall: https://whimsical-wears-shop.fourthwall.com/

If you have a side hustle as a crafter, feel free to tell me what you make and where to find it in the comments. Or share about unique things you’ve bought from an artisan or crafter.

In my wildest childhood dreams, I never thought I’d need welfare. I would never be one of “those people.”

Until I was.

While I battled mental health conditions since middle school, it was the medical trauma during my junior year of college that caused the cracks to begin to show—almost dying on the floor of the E.R. waiting room has that effect on people.

Still, I finished college and then went to graduate school for a counseling degree. Two months into my job as a therapist, I had a nervous breakdown. It was too much and mu mind, body and even soul gave up.

And I never quite recovered.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder along with disabling anxiety and depression contributed to chronic health conditions before I even turned 30.

Thankfully, my best friend helped me to navigate The System, gave me a place to live, and helps me buy things like deodorant. Largely, I’ve learned how to save money, look for deals, and use coupons. If it isn’t on sale, I don’t usually buy it unless I absolutely need it.

It’s not like I never go to a coffeehouse for tea or meet up with a friend for a meal, but my part-time job and side hustles don’t bring in a lot of extra income.

I am one of 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP benefits to buy my food every month. I am grateful I love in a country that helps people like me, who are trying our best to heal, move forward, and be light for others.

I hope one day I no longer need SSI, Medicaid, and SNAP. I know it’s a tough battle, but I’m a resilient woman.

***

The reason I shared my story is because there are many stereotypes about the kind of people who rely on government benefits that we’re fat, lazy people who don’t want to work or that we’re somehow cheating the system. I mean, I am fat, but I never wanted this life, nor did I plan for it.

I also wanted to put some skin in the game.

Yesterday, on a whim of creativity, I made a graphic, a hashtag, and hoped to start a social media movement. So far, it hasn’t gone far, but it has helped a few people.

It’s called #MyNeedsList.

The concept is simple. Individuals who receive SNAP, WIC, are furloughed, working without pay, or unemployed make an Amazon wish list with shelf stable foods, hygiene and cleaning items, and household needs. Then they post the link on their list online with the hashtag #MyNeedsList so those who want to help out can find the lists.

Sure, you can donate to some of the amazing charities and food pantries taking donations. You can also send some soup to a random stranger you saw on Threads or secretly send a few things to a Facebook friend. If you want to help someone out in a personal way, this is a great way to do it!

I’m posting a link to #MyNeedsList, but not because I have anymore need. My online community rallied around me. I want to show those of you who want to make a list the types of items you can include, but also show I’m putting skin in the game.

Example: Amy’s Needs List https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/30112C7JO6FN4?ref_=wl_share

Just a word about some of the items you see on people’s lists: some people, like me, have weird digestive issues and need to eat certain foods that seem odd or expensive. If you have an item like that on your list, you can always leave a note explaining why you put it there.

Please spread the word about #MyNeedsList. You can even take a screenshot of the above graphic.

Thank you for being a force for good and loving your neighbor so well.

I look at the clock this morning–11:06 on a Friday morning. I choke back tears and place a steadying hand on the kitchen counter, as the familiar lightheadedness that comes from grief washes over me.

After all, it’s not just any Friday morning. It’s Halloween Day.

11:06 a.m. isn’t the most terrifying of times on this spooky day, but today it’s a painful one.

Growing up, we always had our elementary school parties the Friday before Halloween, which meant students left early, ate lunch, and returned to school in costumes to parade around the block before eating tons of sugary treats before the big event that evening–Trick-or-Treat.

It was magical.

Since my mother, a kindergarten teacher, was wrangling her own students at the elementary school where she worked and my dad was working at the hospital, it was up to my maternal grandparents–the only grandparents I really knew–to pick me up from school and get me ready for my school party.

Usually, students were dismissed at 11:00 a.m. If I was still in third grade, I’d be in my grandfather’s green Chrysler right now, probably talking his ear off about my favorite types of candy. My grandmother had lunch ready when I burst through the door with a definite “I HAVE ARRIVED” energy.

Finally, I would don the costume, which was always hand-sewn for me by my grandparents.

My grandfather was a sewing machine mechanic at Laros Silk Mill, which sat in the shadow of Bethlehem Steel. He got a job there after he tried to sign up to fight in World War II four different times–three times in PA, and once in NJ–but was ultimately rejected because his flat feet inhibited his ability to go on long marches. If he couldn’t fight, he said he’d “fight with the boys” by making American flags and army parachutes during the war. A master craftsman, he did well in his profession.

I don’t know where my grandmother learned to sew, but she was always working on some sort of sewing or needlework project. My mom told me she made clothes for one of my mother’s childhood friends. The girl who was one of seven siblings and wore the same outfit every day.. That is, until my grandmother intervened.

My mother usually bought the pattern for my yearly costume and the fabric and my grandparents got to work. My costume was always completed by October 1, at the very latest, because my grandparents were nothing if not diligent.

I had some outstanding handmade costumes. One year they made a cheerleading outfit, another year I was an American Indian woman (we didn’t know about cultural appropriation back then.) My most memorable outfit, by far, was my fifth grade autumn princess dress complete with crown. It was an elegant costume to say goodbye to my beloved school Halloween parties. Next year I’d be in middle school and there weren’t parties there.

I wanted a pink and purple dress, but my mom bought deep orange fabric with a coordinating harvest-type print. “Trust me,” she said, “It will look good.”

And she was right. It was a poofy, magnificent regal dress fit for a princess. I never felt like a pretty girl, but that dress almost made me believe that I was beautiful.

I was disappointed I didn’t win the class costume contest. My dress was far superior to the store-bought costumes. The first place winner was a kid who dressed up like an ATM machine. Big whoop. It’s not like anyone could withdraw real money. And seriously, what kid wants to dress up like an ATM machine?

Now at 45, my elementary school days are far behind me, but I still like to be a cool adult who dresses up for Trick-or-Treaters. I looked at Halloween outfits for the past few days after deciding I didn’t want to be Little Red Riding Hood or Mrs. Captain America again this year. The Sally (Nightmare Before Christmas) and Glinda (Wicked) dresses were cute, but cheaply made. Plus, the high prices made my eyes bug out.

Nothing I found came close to the beautiful costumes my grandparents made me–each stitch they sewed was an “I love you.”

And at 11:06 a.m. on this Halloween morning, I am reminded of that love and whisper “I love you” to the ghost of the memory I hold with a straight pin in my heart.

This post was inspired by Kelly Brown’s beautiful post, “Spooky Sounds: Childhood Reflections on Halloween”. Please visit her Substack, Notes Between Notes to read her incredible body of work. She’s a truly talented storyteller.