“It is what it is.” Until it isn’t.

If 2020 had a phrase, that might be it. “It is what it is.” I started hearing people use it in the summer, but it really hit me hard when President Trump used it to refer to COVID-19’s death toll in the U.S. I hate this phrase. For starters, it’s obvious, like saying you found

My Morning Affirmations

There’s a lot of woo-woo stuff out there about speaking things into being, that visualizing and claiming things can make them happen through the “law of attraction.” On the one hand, this is BS: unlike God, we cannot simply speak things into existence. On the other hand, we are made like God and in his

Notes on “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”

Systemic racism is not new, but widespread discussion of it has been. I keep writing and rewriting, unsure of what to say because I am a white person who grew up in an abundantly white, rural place who assumed that life where people didn’t all look the same was like Sesame Street. I struggle because

October Links I Loved

One thing I have missed about blogging is having somewhere to share the pieces that made me think the most from the month–if only to come back myself and see what I was learning about at that time (beyond books). I just have three this month, but sometimes less is more, right? Verity Podcast on

On a decade of parenting

We plunked down a wad of cash on a slew of matching photo albums. That means I’ve been going through old mismatched Target clearance albums to pull out photos and printing what I need to bring us up to date. It is really something to have so many moments from that season captured, both through