Like many Americans, I grew up believing that success is a direct result of productivity, that succeeding means achieving big goals, accomplishing difficult tasks, and producing high-quality work consistently and constantly. To be honest, I’m not sure I fully realized this was something I believed until I couldn’t do those…

I don’t know how much attention you’ve paid to the news recently, but more than a thousand unmarked graves have now been discovered at the former sites of residential schools in Canada over the last month. These were boarding schools where Indigenous children were — against the will of their…

(Photo credit: Lavender Belle Miniatures via Instagram) I love setting up. That sounds weird, I know, but it’s true. In so many aspects of life, for so much of my life, I love and have loved setting up. The follow through? It’s not so much my thing. Whenever I played…

(Photo Credit) My husband and I are very fortunate people. We live with our one son in a four-bedroom house, which means we have a bedroom for us, a bedroom for our son, and still two more left over. One of those we use as a study, and the closet…

A number like 215 can be hard to fully grasp, fully appreciate. Forty-three quintets. Almost eighteen dozens. 215 children is even harder to fathom. 215 curious minds. 430 frightened eyes. 2,150 fingers grasping for help. 215 futures destroyed. And we will never know how many children, how many grandchildren, how many great-grandchildren might have been but never could. 215 moms, dads, aunties, uncles, cousins, grandparents, all left with broken hearts and broken spirits.