Writing – Page 3 – Katie Curtis

What’s In You

5 February, 2016/0 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

As I ease back into a regular running routine training for the half, I am so so thankful for the gift that is moving my body + endorphins + better sleep. If you have never run before, check out this novice post (I promise all my posts won’t be about running, but if you can’t stand hearing people talk about running, you know where the close button is so click, click.)

I started checking in regularly with one of my favorite writers on running , Kristin Armstrong. I can’t read one of her posts and not go for a run that day. If you have ever met me in person and we have gotten into one of those soul searching conversations, chances are I have mentioned her at some point, because that girl gets deep. And she gets happy too.

When I opened up her new post, I was so glad to see she has not slowed down in the wisdom department. If anything she has gotten even better now that she is getting a degree in counseling. This post revolved around a comment her yoga teacher made at the end of class: “What would you do if you fully understood that you already have everything you need to achieve your goals?”

Umm.

Well.

I had to think about that one. This is so contrary to my normal inclinations. I’m always thinking about striving, growing. Becoming more. What do you mean I don’t need to add to myself?

Of course, I had the formula inverted. All that growing is just becoming who we were meant to be. It is so much more about letting go, and so much less about acquiring anything that could possibly contribute to our worth.

For some reason, it got me thinking about an interview I listened to with Mary Karr on NPR. I had to rewind one section three times to think through exactly what she was saying. Karr said her main problem was herself, what she projected onto life, and the more she spent time praying, the more that projection improved.

Somehow these two ideas are intertwined. Our mind can guide us to our goals, or hold us back from them. So figuring this out would make us…a badass, basically.

And then I experienced this in real time. I had an epiphany while running; I recognized the source of a ghost lurking around most of the corners of my life, the one that whispers you’re not good enough. You don’t measure up. I figured out exactly where it came from, how I fueled it, fed into it, let it diminish me. I was using a script that was a lie, and I was projecting it onto life. Not all the time, of course, but enough to rob me of my full joy and confidence.

Dropping that script feels like the universe shifted. It is a kinder, gentler, more forgiving world. And I am less afraid. Of course, the world didn’t change, only my projection onto it. Now I know how to silence the lies and how to let them go. And you know what? It totally makes me feel like a badass. I was projecting onto this life something that was excruciatingly painful – that my worth wasn’t up to the task at hand- and it was dragging me down. And now it’s not. Cue this song.

So I am working all this out while I put in my miles. Sure, I might fall into old thought patterns, when I am tired or freshly wounded. But if I am taking care of myself and my people well, working hard, running, and as Karr said, praying, then my projection stays hopeful.

How’s your projection going? What’s holding you back? If it’s fear, what would you do if you weren’t afraid? Let’s change our screens, ladies and gents. Life is too short not to, and you’re too beautiful.

A Day in the Life

27 January, 2016/0 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

Photo Source: Pinterest

I love reading these from other people. And some days look very different and way less productive then this one. But I am so thankful for all that this life has led to – the hard, the heartbreaking, and the good.

A Day in the Life of a Writer Mom:

5:30 – wake up, turn on coffee that has been prepped the night before because I just can’t even.

5:35 – run 3 miles. hate the first half of them, love the second.

6:15-7:14 – get kids breakfast and on track to go to school. smile over the top of my coffee cup when I catch my kids cracking each other up with jokes.

7:15 – get the kids on the bus, shower and get dressed.

7:30 – check email, read something inspiring (Blessed Is She has been really reliable).

8:00 – make cheesy eggs for a toddler who will only eat cheesy eggs.

8:02 – realize I’m hungry too, make more eggs.

8:15 – eat breakfast with toddler and sing “Feed the birds” from Mary Poppins eighteen times.

8:30 – send Andrew off to pre-school thanks to an amazing teacher who picks him up!

8:45 – switch laundry. decide to write at Barnes and Noble since I have 4530 birthday presents to buy gift cards for for upcoming birthday parties.

9:00 spend an hour trying to tidy your room/closet/bathroom since I never have time.

10:00 finally head to B&N.

10:20 spend 10 minutes checking out the books and cookbooks laying out on the tables. tempting, always.

10:30- 10:40 find a table at the Starbucks at Barnes& Noble. sit down and turn on computer. wait for it to load while sipping a coffee you definitely don’t need after your last four cups but feel like you have to buy something.

10:50 decide the ladies across from you are chatting too loud. go to the music section to buy ear phones since you forgot yours.

11:00 return to computer. open ear buds only decide they have the Fort Knox packaging on them.

11:05 get up and ask a barista for some scissors while you both share a joke about how easy it is to cut fingers on all that plastic packaging.

11:06 open ear buds. cut finger on the plastic. get napkin around your finger. start typing and sigh in relief that the cut is not affecting your work.

11:10 Realize you have done very little work and your writing day is half over. sit down and write everything you can in remaining 1.5 hours.

12:45 head home, call husband who is traveling this week, and negotiate 3 hours on Saturday since you had so many things to do you couldn’t write. vow to write at home to save time.

1:00 throw together a sandwich for lunch, then pick up Andrew. talk about important things like doing “oh-ga” at school (aka yoga) and as we cross over the lone set of tracks in our town, “TRAIN TRACKS! MOMMY THOSE ARE TRAIN TRACKS!”

1:30 put Andrew down for a nap. one of my favorite times of the day since he loves books. and snuggles.

1:45 check email before kids get off bus at 2:10

2:10 INTENSE CHOAS as everyone asks you for something the second they walk into the door.

2:15 remind everyone to pick healthy snacks as they reach for the ice cream.

2:18 remind them again.

2:20 throw something in a crock pot for dinner from this book while we chat about their day.

3:00 interview experts for upcoming freelance article while older kids take a break after school.

4:00 help with homework, then get dressed for karate.

5:00 Sit in car while toddler watches Dora because he is too loud to go into the dojo. think about vacuuming out car at car wash next door but call best friend instead. those goldfish crushed into the carpeting will still be there tomorrow.

6:15 pray, eat, and love the faces around the table in between talking about their day and instructing them how to eat not like a wild animal. try to clear table and do dishes while play-yelling reaches a frenzied decible.

7:00 watch a family tv show, basking in the silence. Master Chef Jr. has been a huge favorite as of late.

7:30 brush teeth, pjs, books and bed.

8:00 as the last bedroom door is shut, take an inventory on energy level as I head to bed. low = watch TV, high = actually read one of the 50 books on my nightstand. (Two weeks ago I would have included a third option, zombie level tired = wine, but since I have been getting up and running I am off to bed!)

9:30 watch Colbert on demand, do the Examen and get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

Heart Holes

17 November, 2015/2 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Last night, as we were driving home in the dim light after an electric sunset, my husband and I were talking about the events of the weekend, our hearts heavy over the news from Paris. We were talking about how social media is being used to lure in young new terrorists all over Europe. In my tired state, I uttered, “I just don’t even get the draw that terrorists have for new recruits.”

When I woke up today, I read this from a writer I follow on Instagram:

“Re-read a book I read this summer about a young French journalists’s shocking undercover investigation into how today’s most ruthless terrorists use social media to reach and recruit increasing numbers of young Europeans and trick them into going to Raqqa, Syria, the most bloody city in the world, occupied by ISIS (and strict Sharia law), with the promise of love, spiritual purpose and a better life. The author chronicles her intense, month-long online relationship with a member of ISIS – who turns out to be non other than the right hand-man of Baghadi, the caliph of ISIS and the most dangerous man in the world. The book is called “In the Skin of a Jihadist”. Read it and protect our young!”

I thought of the really naive statement I said the night before. These terrorists are, after all, human. And at the core of every human is the need for love. If they can’t fill it with love, something else will enter. Nature abhors a vacuum. Some define evil as the absence of good, and though we can’t understand the terrorists totally, this helps explain their hatred to a degree.

This Monday morning, as we woke up and went about our day, most of us did not encounter the type of evil that is filling up these empty hearts across the ocean. Yet. The pundits say they are coming here, and though I refuse to let terrorism serve its purpose of making me feel terrified, it seems very likely to me that what happened in Paris will be duplicated. As the world starts to strike back against ISIS, they will retaliate. Soft targets. Big publicity. More recruits.

It is so easy to feel helpless in the face of all of it. We can’t do anything about it, except pray and lend our sovereign will to our leaders, and hope that they will respond effectively.

But it occurs to me that this dynamic of hatred entering in where there is want for love is something we do see closer to home, right where we are. The teens that feel unseen. Depression that is unchecked and turns into a rampage. Family members who are estranged. Hurt people who tend to shut off, shut out, or lash out. Relationships where people feel abused or abandoned. People in our lives who do the unforgivable, or are unable to forgive. We need to be brave right here, and reach out to them.

And we need to have fun. We need to show that despite heartbreak and terror, the fun in life, the joy in loving, is bigger. Yes, the world is hurting and there are so many problems to solve. But sometimes fear and grief can make us paralyzed. Fear can rob us of our humanity, of seeing the humanity in others. But love, laughter, joy – they can thaw that fear.

We can’t solve the problem of terrorism, but we can meet the need for love in our every day, in those around us and celebrate what’s good. We can see those that we tend to put off because they seem hungry or haughty, and offer a smile, a kind word, a moment where we see them. The light in them. And replace the vacuum – before it turns to hate – with love.

The Art of Memoir

15 October, 2015/0 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

As you might know from reading this blog I’ve been on a memoir kick, because I am trying to write one, a fact which I hope you’ll forget if I fail miserably. And if you’re a long time reader you know that I was trying to publish a novel with an agent and after a year of trying, no bites. So failing is a definite possibility. But most good writers had the same problem and the same fear each time they started a new work, so I am in good company.

When I recently picked up Mary Karr’s new book on the subject, The Art of Memoir, it was like finding Mecca.

I’m one of those people that thinks everyone could write a memoir. I love hearing people’s stories – seated next to me at a wedding, riding the train, hanging at sports with my kids, the dump. I want to know, basically, what led them to this exact moment, and what was the highlight reel of the stumbling blocks in their way. (Coincidentally, I don’t love small talk. I love big talk, the kind where you let it all hang out.) Then I think about, how would you craft that into a great read?

Well, just ask Mary.

She knows a thing or two since she has written three memoirs herself; The Liar’s Club and Cherry, both about her crazy upbringing in Texas with alcoholic parents and a mother who, during a psychotic break, stood over her with a kitchen knife, as well as some unfortunate run-ins with some pedophiles. She also teaches the subject to Grad Students at Syracuse University.

When I was on the first chapter of The Art of Memoir I put it down and bought Lit, her third memoir, and read it over the course of the next 2 1/2 days. (Thankfully we were on vacation in Maine and I had nap duty.) This book chronicles her going to college, getting married, then becoming a mother, and alcoholic, and a professor, then getting sober, getting divorced, and converting to Catholicism.

If it sounds like a busy ten years, it was. And she writes about it masterfully. Like Anne Lamott, this subject matter of a crazy family, a stumbling coming of age, becoming a mother, and – in discovering how hard and painful all of this is – finding a belief in the spiritual parts of themselves, and in God. Which was a total shock to both of them, having come from non-spiritual homes. (Karr says a year prior, she would have believed that she would be a church goer about as much as a pole dancer or a spy.)

Reading these ladies’ stories shifts something in me, puts something in place that was out of alignment. They’re like spiritual chiropractors. At one of Karr’s lowest points, someone said to her, try to pray for 30 days, and just see if your life gets better. And it does – she gets awarded prize money from a poetry contest she didn’t even enter when she desperately needs the money, someone lends her a car when they go abroad right when she needs one. It is an amazingly hopeful tale. The possibility that we are loved, that there is reason to hope, and that we are our own biggest problem, abound in her book. She writes at the end of Lit:

“For it feels as if I was made – from all the forms a human can take – not to prove myself worthy but to refine the worth I am formed from. To acknowledge it, own it, and spend it on others.”

All of this, of course, is why a memoir is so compelling to write, and read. In The Art of Memoir, she holds your hand in the really hard work of finding your truth, finding your voice, and finding a way to tell your story, with the best parts of your heart and mind. She cites a close friend, who asked her when she was struggling to finish Lit, “what would you write if you weren’t afraid?”

Karr acts as midwife to our stories coming into the light. Because all of this must be cloaked in flesh and blood, and be as concrete as the smell of your mother’s perfume. So what would we all write if we weren’t afraid? Because we need it. We need art to touch the parts of ourselves that others can’t. That therapy can’t, or our families.

Preach, Mary. The world needs your work. It needs the best from all of us.

Food Memoir Reading

28 August, 2015/0 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

So my summer reading definitely had a theme to it: the food memoir.

It started in France and I have to say that reading books about other people traveling and eating totally enriched my trip. Once I got home I couldn’t stop and read a few more. And I have two that I can’t wait to get to so I am including them too. So on the off chance that you love food and travel, here you go.

1. Tender At The Bone by Ruth Reichl

There is just something about her writing that really touches a very personal part of you and makes you feel like you are sitting down with a sister or best friend over coffee. Born to a mother who suffers from manic depression, she has an innate appetite that fuels her path in food writing (she was the editor of Gourmet Magazine for 10 years). She was rather groundbreaking in this genre, since only MFK Fisher had been a woman who wrote about food. During this period she worked at a camp in France, went to a French boarding school in Canada, Honeymooned all over Italy and Greece for months, and then ended up a Berkley hippy during a groundbreaking food scene. And she shares recipes that give a picture of each period, many of them mouthwatering, which she wanted to use instead of photographs but readers begged her for some and I am glad they did. The time period is a very sweet, coming of age period for Reichl, unlike its successor…

2. Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl:

Here she has some scandal. Affairs. Adopting a baby only to have it pulled away after 6 months. But it is mostly about the food. And when your friends are Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck and Jonathan Waxman, there is a lot to say about what is happening in food. Throughout the book she is the LA Times Food Critic, and so she covers everything from Wolfgang Pucks new restaurant opening to a chef’s dinner in Spain where she goes drinking all night with the celebrity chefs she is covering. But the parts that stay with me are how she couldn’t stop making Cream of Mushroom soup when she was going through a divorce. There is such an intimacy to food and she really captures it.

Both books are page turners, and now I am reading Sapphire and Garlic, their sequel, which I bought on Kindle the second I finished Comfort Me With Apples. It follows how she becomes the NY Times food critic and has to dress in disguise in order to review the food. I can’t put it down and keep hiding from my kids so I can read it.

3. My Sweet Life In Paris by David Leibovitz –

I can’t believe how good this book was! I found myself telling the stories to my husband and father-in-law as I was reading it because it was so appropos to what we were experiencing in our travels (for example, feeling incredibly rude getting up to tell the waiter we needed our check, only to learn from Leibovitz that they expect you to tell them when you are done and want the check, since bringing it to you is considered rude, like they are rushing you.) This book also includes recipes and I for real want to try every. single. one. There is so much hilarity in the book but also real cultural insights into the French. A must read for anyone diving into their culture.

4. Consider the Oyster by MFK Fisher –

I read this before (and even did a blog post about it! One of my favorites), but she is like a supporting character in Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me With Apples I am revisiting everything she wrote. This is a good one to start with.

5. Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist-

This was a book I started a long time ago but only got a third of the way through. It was so nice to read it right after Tender at the Bone and Sweet Life in Paris, because the stories are based in the Midwest, where I grew up (Fun Fact: I actually grew up in the town next to Shauna Niequist.) So it was nice to have the narrative of a love of food through all different contexts, especially a familiar one. I want to make every one of Shauna’s recipes. And I love how she celebrates life around the table.

6. The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan-

Ok, so this one isn’t exactly about food but it is a memoire of an Irish Catholic family, which helps me so much to understand where my loyalty and faith stem from. She gets cancer at 36 and has 2 small girls at the same time that her father gets cancer. And the resulting chaos in her family that ensues reminds me that every family is a little (or a lot) crazy. Really touching was her tribute to a mom of four kids, which she always wanted to have. Her hormone therapy made her unable to have any more so she had to grieve her dream. She is a master at creating character portraits of people and she writes from the heart, even if it exposes her own weaknesses.

7. A Personal History, Katherine Graham –

I read this memoir a long time ago, and it is also not about food, but it has become the standard for me for all memoirs and I find myself thinking of it often. She was the editor of the Washington Post after her manic depressive husband, who was the head of the paper, committed suicide. Just a great story of an elegant lady whose steely intelligence outpaced her own naïveté to become a towering female figure in politics and writing.

Up next, these two selections which are next on my reading list. I already know I will love them and am really familiar with the authors. Having them to look forward to are like having unopened chocolates waiting for me.

8. The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffery Steingarten –

I love Jeffery Steingarten as a judge on Top Chef Masters, and I was thrilled to figure out that the food writer for Vogue was the same gruff guy I see tearing apart the chefs’ creations, especially because he writes sort of sweetly about food. The first piece I ever read by him was on Brown Butter, and I have loved every piece he ever wrote since. I have a feeling it will be like Ruth Reichl’s Sapphires and Garlic in content, but Steingarten has a style all his own.

9. Mastering the Art of French Eating – by Ann Mah

I follow Ann Mah’s blog because she splits her time between NYC and Paris, and she is a momma to a toddler, so her food is always based on great food experiences but is pretty down to earth at the same time. Her husband was in the military, and like Julia Child, she has to define herself in the city of Paris alone when he is called to duty in the middle east. If this book is half as warm and smart as Ann’s blog is, it will be a terrific read. I can’t wait to read this book.

Have you read any memoirs that you loved? I’m all ears.

Happy Reading! xoxo Katie

Marriage Math

10 July, 2015/0 Comments/in Marriage, Writing/by Katie

Sorry for the radio silence on my writing blog. As this post can attest to, we had a busy June! But I am looking forward to getting back to regular writing after our travels. Good writing takes time, and I am striving for quality, so I will always choose that over quantity. But I love this little space on the internet. I hope you do too.

***

“Going once. Going twice. Sold to the gentleman in the back.”

The auctioneer pointed to my husband, Rob.

When he had put in a bid for a week long stay at a house in France moments before, I thought he was just trying to help the charity fundraiser by upping the bid*. We had four kids. A busy life. A trip abroad was not even on the radar. But when he outbid another person, I knew.

He was doing it for me.

My husband doesn’t love France. He’s big, they’re little. He’s loud, they’re quiet. In a country of demure, he’s a mechanical bull in a china shop. But he does love me, and he was thinking that this trip could be our 10 year anniversary gift. We had talked about doing a big trip, perhaps skiing in Austria or Rome in a few years, but he knows my passion for food has some big roots in French cooking, since my mom studied there for a year and was really influenced by the food. Growing up she passed the love on to us. I had visited Paris in college with good friends when I did a semester abroad in London, fell deeply in love, and vowed to return. In the mean time, I worshipped at the knee of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and David Leibowitz’s My Paris Kitchen. Rob knew all this, and on a whim, acted on love.

And that’s how, a few weeks ago, I was packing a bag for France. The week was a doozy: I was solo parenting, the kids were on their first week of summer vacation (read: fighting). I had to bring the car to the mechanics and meet a plumber to install a new hot water heater, go to lots of tennis lessons, mine and the kids, and leave my house and fridge ready for my mother-in-law to watch my 5 and 2 year old. My plate was Thanksgiving buffet in Vegas full. I really didn’t even have the head space to consider what we should do in France. Should I brush up on my French? Research wines? Or just grab my passport and go? Wait. Where was my passport? (Commence turning house inside out. I should have done the ConMari method while I was at it if I had an ounce of time to spare. It was on my desk the whole time, where I had searched over and over. !@#$%#!) Finally, thanks to my saintly mother-in-law watching the two youngest at home, and a blessed father-in-law who came along and watched the big kids so we could go out at night, it happened. We were on the plane, Champagne in hand.

This was the longest trip we had ever taken. Even our honeymoon was a quick 5 day affair to Aruba because it had a direct flight and my husband had just started a new territory for work. Then we had four kids in succession and moved a couple of times. We also learned that since Rob has to travel a lot during the week, family trips were best taken on long weekends.

But the other truth is that we ski a lot. All of our travel eggs went into a ski condo basket, which we bought just after our third was born. It was a tough decision at the time. I wanted to figure out our main house first, and we were in the process of looking for a house in a bigger neighborhood with more kids. But my husband loves to ski the way I love to cook. He took me up to see the condo one fall weekend, at peak foliage time in the mountains, because he is a salesman and knows to do things like that. We committed – to skiing and spaghetti dinners and weekends away – before we even knew where we were going to live the rest of the time. Since then it has become our family get away. Going up there has not always been easy, especially when our fourth was a baby. There have been tears and fights. But it has been so worth it to have that family time up north, to have a familiar place with rituals and routine and relaxation.

So when he bid on the trip to France, it was a gesture. A giving back to all of the times I have packed up four kids, driven them north (often alone since he would meet us from work), returned tired but happy on Sunday night, only to dive into a busy school week. He knows the sacrifice involved, and how I made room in our lives for his passions. He was returning the favor, and I was deeply grateful.

We went into this trip knowing that we have both made concessions for the other. Sacrificed to fit in big important things – our time, our money, our sanity – for something vital to the other person. All sweet things in a marriage. But what is beautiful to see is that all this giving has made a certain alchemy happen. When we shared in each other’s passions, they took root in our own hearts and grew. And when our kids share in it too, the joy grows exponentially.

I have become passionate about skiing, excited to see the first flurry in winter, philosophical as I navigate a challenging run, and giddy when I ski with my kids next to me. And they love it even more then I do. When we are skiing, we are in the moment. Fully present, fully alive.

And Rob has grown to love new food, and possibly even France. When we got married, he hated fish. On our last night in Paris, we sought out a salmon for dinner. We all made happy memories over a cote de boef that was as big as our labrador, the intense flavor in the raspberry macarons, the trois fromage crepe that called to us every night at 5 o’clock, hungry and thirsty from exploring hot streets. We ate in the moment. Fully present, fully alive. And while there is no question that Rob would take the beaches of Saint-Malo over the hot crowded streets of Paris, he still found beaucoup de joie de vivre in France.

They say that love is when you can halve each others sorrows and double each others joys.

It is marriage math. And I am so thankful to be its student.

*I wrote before how our trip was from the charity fundraiser for the Hope For Gus foundation. Please visit their page to learn more about helping families with sons who have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Finding Joy

20 March, 2015/4 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

Last Thursday was a normal day for me. My husband was on a business trip, I woke up, got my three oldest kids on the bus, cared for a feverish toddler and cuddled him on the couch instead of working out. I did the dishes. I made extra coffee.

While I was doing these ordinary things, a woman lay quietly dying in a town next to me, at a hospice home. She had lost her fight against breast cancer. She was a former member of my book club though I didn’t know her. She was almost my age, 37, and had two young kids.

Also circulating this week are the beautiful words of a neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, as well as his death from metastic lung cancer. He was also 37, with one young daughter. Somehow it is our common age that makes these lives, these stories, set up camp in my heart. Being a parent, the one responsible for so many things, the doer of so many tasks, it is easy to think we are invincible. That death can’t touch us because there is breakfast to be made and a school run in 15 minutes.

At the same time, there is new life all around me. It seems like every time I turn around a new baby is being born to my friends, my family, bloggers I read. I went to my nephew’s baptism this past weekend, in a church overflowing with the children of my family and friends. The spirit of young children was so well captured by Paul Kalanithi as he wrote of his final days:

“Yet there is dynamism in our house. Our daughter was born days after I was released from the hospital. Week to week, she blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks of her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room.

How can one world hold so much? How can one heart?

At the christening, I talked to my friend Dave, whose 7 year old son has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and is adorable and hilarious and has a life expectancy of 27 years. I think about their family a lot, mostly because they post the funny things he says on Facebook. (Today’s example: When his mom got pulled over by a cop for speeding, he shouted, “Mom, are you going to jail!?” She got a warning.) They recently got turned down for a drug trial that they were really hoping to participate in, to hopefully buy time for their son. His wife Kathy took the news really hard. But Dave said, “I just keep telling her, we have today. We have right now. I choose right now.”

I am in awe of Dave and Kathy. And Paul. And the caretakers of people who will walk the narrow way on this earth. But I think they know something precious from their trials. Young people who have lost a parent, and husbands and wives who have lost their spouse, people with family members battling chronic illness. They know how to find joy, since they have had to cultivate seeking it out. And they know not to take it for granted.

As I waded through another week of a winter that is just hanging on, of colds that are just hanging on, I thought of those hurting, and I thought of Dave and Kathy. And how insignificant (though very real) my cabin cancer + sick kids + husband traveling week was was in the big picture. I had a chat with my heart that was buried under all these layers of coldness and loss and isolation.

Enough. Find some joy.

So I set out to turn my heart around. To chose right now too. I went for a run and took a shower, I bought some flowers and cooked a big dinner for all the people I love. I read to my toddler and five year old. I listened to my chatty first grader about diaries and first grade gossip (which is hilarious). I played chess with my second grader. I prayed.

And something happened. Something really remarkable. By opening up the space in my heart for joy, it had a place to go to. And it came. I don’t know if it was grace, or neurons, or something in our will that lets us choose joy, but it happened.

There is such a vastness wrapped up in the small, insignificant moments of our days. A loved one walking in the door, a belly laugh, the taste of good peach jam on toast. It is hard to catch sometimes, but it’s there. Here’s to seeking it, to being reminded of it, and to letting it rest in our hearts.