I am thrilled to welcome my friend Hannah Vaughn Setzer as a guest blogger today. We haven’t known each other long, but almost as soon as we met, we knew we had many things in common: love of social media, interest in fitness, and a desire to help people understand challenges people face in navigating […]
Five Minute Friday: JUST
Five Minute Friday: JUST This is what came to mind when I read today’s prompt: the number of times (I’ve lost count…) that I have heard someone who is praying publicly use “just” frequently throughout their prayer. That’s probably not what was intended by this prompt (I think it was supposed to be more about […]
Writing Creates Knowing: Inspiration from Patrice Gopo
Does the word “essay” immediately take your mind back to the pressure of writing the perfect admissions essay as part of a college application or give you flashbacks to pressure-filled language arts exercises in high school or college? If so, spend a half hour listening to Patrice Gopo talk about her journey toward being an essayist, […]
Five Minute Friday: CONFIDENT
Five Minute Friday: CONFIDENT I laughed when I saw that this week’s word is “confident.” I’ve written about confidence before. You know what breeds confidence? Situations where you prove to yourself that you are capable of creating, helping others and producing something that you walk away from with more celebrations than questions. I had a […]
“Be Pretty” and Other Lessons from Mom
My mom spent roughly an hour last year on February 13 “on hospice.” Then she was gone. The story leading up to that hour was complicated and ran through three hospital stays, two intubations, a broken wrist and about 24 hours at home. The final hospital stay started when she fell and broke her wrist, […]
Five Minute Friday: BUILD
Five Minute Friday: BUILD I was working with a story today as editor of the Sigma Xi SmartBrief. The story was about a type of yarn that expands and contracts in response to temperature, making it a potential component of temperature-management clothing. Because we research every detail of the stories we use in order to […]