My mom’s mother had Alzheimer’s. The last time I saw my grandmother, when my mom introduced me to her, she lifted her withered arms in joy, saying, “Oh! I have a granddaughter!” I was thirty years old. My mom’s memory has been slipping for some time. Having witnessed what happened to my grandmother, I wanted …
On June 15, 2009, this was Seth Godin’s daily blog post: You matter When you love the work you do and the people you do it with, you matter. When you are so gracious and generous and aware that you think of other people before yourself, you matter. When you leave the world a better …
“You matter.” Those words begin the first activity in my University of Cincinnati Diversity & Inclusion class. It’s the foundation of the course and it deserves focus, so students remember it. In the activity, students pair up. They work from page 7 of the Syllabus, which contains 10 statements. The pairs alternate saying each statement …
My brother Eric is adopted. It was never a secret. My parents got him when he was ten days old. He was my little brother. I’ve wondered about my brother’s history but he never seemed interested. A few years ago, my not-at-all-subtle and potentially obnoxious self gave Ancestry DNA test kits to my mother and …
Because I had Covid, we shifted my dates to visit mom, pushing everything back a week. Part of the plan is for mom and me to meet my brother Eric in Cape May for lunch. Originally planned for Tuesday, December 27, we moved it to Tuesday, January 3, which is my birthday. My mom is …
You know how when you get sick you think, “This will be okay. I can get caught up on my reading, make sure I’m ready to do my taxes, yadda, yadda.” You think these things, right? But all those things you think you’re going to do, you do none of them. You’re too tired and …
It’s Sunday, December 18th as I’m writing this. Today was a big day—the day I finished the refresh of Sweet Baby Lover, my memoir. There’s still much to do related to different print and ebook versions, but to use a term Trent would use, the “guts” are done. I thought I was finished yesterday, but …
I’ve just wrapped up teaching at UC this semester. It was an unusual class. There is always one student who lets me know they are struggling with thoughts of self-harm, but this year there were several dealing with significant mental health challenges. Anxiety. Depression. Feelings of worthlessness. In prior years, if a student was going …
“Everything you eat has to die for you to eat it.” This is something Trent said. It’s the reason I’m an omnivore, not a vegetarian. For me to live, everything I eat must die. I suppose fruit is a technicality, but I’m stealing the food the fruit seed needed to grow into a plant. Trent …
My mom may have encouraged me to ignore auto exhaust, but she raised me to be conscious of the weather. Mom grew up on a small farm in Nebraska, dirt poor. It was the kind of farm that is almost extinct—a farm with a little of everything. There were crops and cows, chickens and pigs. …