All posts tagged: sadness

Peace Be With You: A Letter

comments 7
emotional health / mental health

Thanksgiving Day, 2014 Dear Dad, This year is the very first year that I remember not avoiding your phone call. Every year of the past forty I have avoided what most consider a mundane task; and admit that I did this in several not-terribly-clever ways. All of which I was reasonably certain you could see right through, as you had the unfortunate hypervigilance of an individual with the brain wiring of a coyote. Always alert. Always defensive. Paranoid. Added to […]

Seeking Solace in the Madness

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emotional health / emotional scar tissue / human experience

    How in the bloody hell do you do it?    Do what?   Get through days where all you hear about are the media enhanced war stories, suicides, child abuse and neglect atrocities, gun violence on our neighborhood streets, ISIS, Syria beheadings, earthquakes, fires, melting ice caps, Ebola, political deadlock, the 99%…   Oh. That.  Well, I just have to look at my children. I look into my young son’s deep brown eyes that […]

Painting beauty With the Ashes

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emotional health / emotional scar tissue / human experience / mental health / Uncategorized

Her tattoo read “just be held” in black lowercase typewriter-key font.   It was perhaps one of the most impulsive decisions she’d made for the time commitment it required of her body.  She treated herself to those particular three words on a warm day in July when she felt like she was coming completely undone. Casting Crowns new release,Thrive, had premiered on Pandora.  In a moment of utter despair their song, “Just Be Held” spoke to her.  It cut […]

My daughter/Myself

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emotional health / human experience / mental health / Uncategorized

She looked up at me, tears streaming down both sides of her face.  All I could see were her beautifully lilac-tinted eyes full of water.  It must be the way her tears had accentuated the blueness that she’d been born with, I thought sensibly I don’t remember them being quite that distinctive a shade.  I’m just buying time.  I’m being observant while I think of how to respond to my overwhelmed woman-girl.  Her long wavy hair – both […]