This one is hard for me.  I was putting off writing about this uncomfortable situation I found myself in for a while because I was embarrassed, because I thought maybe the comment made to me was justified in some way.  But after a few weeks of processing, I’m realizing that healing is ongoing and keeping quiet and bottling up feelings won’t help me move forward at all.

I have weeks back, I fell during frisbee practice and...

Diet. A word that gets thrown around all the time.  I’m sure everyone in their life has said or heard someone proclaim that they are going on a diet or talk avidly about the latest fad which is guaranteed to make you lose all your body fat in three weeks.  Maybe diets get talked about so often because they seem so easy: eat a certain way for three weeks and you’ll be a healthier person. Right? Wrong. Dieting is not healthy bec...

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” -Joseph Addison

Are you ever in a funk and need to escape for a while?  Or stuck in a doctor’s office or a hospital room and want a taste of something different?  Reading is one of my most valuable coping strategies. The chance to explore a whole other life, to forget about everything going on in my own world and live in someone else’s, makes all the pain go away for awhile...

I want to talk about something that I don’t know if I’ve ever brought up before on this blog.  Something that I’ve been dealing with since the age of 13, something that seems to fade in and out of my life but in reality is always with me, is a part of me, like a shadow.  It’s taken me 6 years- and the path continues to swerve and weave- to turn this shadow into a strength rather than a haunting weakness.

Today, september 2...

Hello world! I want to apologize for my over two month hiatus, but it feels really good to be back and writing and reflecting.  In late June I departed for my year long study abroad experience in South America. I started in Ecuador where I was for 5 weeks taking classes and travelling with the rest of my group from my university and about two weeks ago we arrived in Argentina which is where I’ll be for the next 11 months or so...

These past few weeks I’ve been nannying for a 3-month-old baby.  I’ve babysat for babies around her age before but it’s been a few years and I think, as I’ve gotten older, my appreciation and awe for children has merely grown.  It’s incredible to watch such a small bundle of cells breathe and move. Even the smallest of motions, like watching them blink or watching them flail their limbs seems like an incredible feat.  The thin...

Love.  It’s a short word- four letters, one syllable, one breath.  Looking at such a small, insignificant formation of letters, it’s hard to imagine just how much meaning and weight it can hold.  The burden, the laughter, the heartache, the desire, the best and most painful feeling in the world, all of it, encompassed in this tiny word.  Love is incredibly scary. It’s all around us, painted as something precious and magical an...