falling into flight

Over the weekend I had a good friend ask me about my writing and when the next installment was coming. And my answer was, essentially, that I want to write more but the content I want to write about involves the current themes threading through my life. And those themes are the same recurring lessons I've already written about. In fact, the things I think about and want to write about are the same lessons I've learned and the discoveries that came from those lessons – as always wrapped up with a bow and put up on the shelf in my mind (recurring theme). Remember I figured it all out! (recurring theme) And isn't there a saying about beating a dead horse in there somewhere? I know sometimes I do feel like a dead horse beating myself over the head again and again. Then I remembered something from a book that I read: “So what if we repeat the same themes? So what if we circle around the same ideas, again and again, generation after generation? So what ...

Most of my life I thought tattoos were bad news. As Mormons, we were instructed to treat our bodies like a temple and not tarnish them. There was also a certain “clean cut” image to uphold. This involved a long list of rules about how to treat these bodies, one being that tattoos were a major no-no. After leaving that life behind it didn't take me long to realize that tattoos were not “bad” and in fact could be a very positive and meaningful piece of art. I became very open to getting a tattoo but felt quite certain that it would need to be something incredibly meaningful in order to have it on my body the rest of my life. Tattoos are permanent after all – no going back. And so far nothing particularly momentous enough had presented itself. Until now. Let me back it up just a smidge. I love to travel. But every time I visit a different country it takes me a day or two to go through, what my husband kindly refers to as, my “adjustment period.”  I feel disori...

I have a set of greeting cards titled “Bad Girls Throughout History.” I use them to play pen pals with my two adult sons who live away from home. On the front is an illustration of one of these multiple women, varying in the qualities of their badassery, and a quote from them on the back. One that has been particularly heavy on my mind this past week has been the card with Queen Elizabeth I reminding me, “The past cannot be cured.” Wise woman. As my life has continually opened up since I left the Mormon church, I have looked back at my first 37 years through a completely different lens. And in doing so, there has been quite a bit of regret and guilt. I carry regret for experiences I missed out on, judgements I made, people I excluded or pushed away unknowingly and an underlying perfectionism that I'm still working through. I have guilt about my previous narrow-mindedness, possibly making others feel inferior, but mostly for the way I raised my three sons. ...