Journeying Home Together
A week or so ago my daughter and I took a road trip with my dad. We traveled the (longer than I remembered) trip to Alabama for the homecoming celebration of a tiny country church my great-great-great-great grandparents planted in 1835. It was an incredible trip, full of eye-opening stories and insights to the power of legacy and time with family we rarely get to see. It was also an exhausting
A couple of months ago, while the world still slept in gray and brown here in Georgia, my husband carved an intricate network of biking trails through the woods behind our house. (I use them for walking, though, because the one time I ventured out on my bike I was scared to death. I’ll do it eventually. Just not yet.) It’s been so good for me to have a natural
A week or so ago, I went to my daughter’s school to read to her class. As the eighteen second-graders lined up to go outside to eat the (Pinterest-inspired and extremely juicy) fruit kabobs I had brought for a snack, several of them surrounded me. It wasn’t the Pyrex dish in my hands that had their attention, though. They had questions for me. “Mrs. Bolyard, are you really writing a
I had a dream last week in which I was driving a huge truck. It wasn’t just any truck, either, but one of those massive ones they use in the rock quarry down the road from my house. One of those dump trucks on steroids, that dwarf school buses and make semi-trucks look like toys. One of those whose gargantuan spare tires require a police escort down the interstate. One of those. I drive
Spring has come to Georgia, although we gave winter little more than a passing glance. Those of us who wait all year to snuggle up in hooded sweaters were sorely disappointed this year as we more often needed T-shirts and sandals. It has taken some work to come to terms with this. Grief is a process, y’all. Yesterday I sat in a sunny corner of the library, the floor-to-ceiling windows
I’m not a big wearer of jewelry. I like it a lot, but I have about a million pieces that sit neglected on my hanging necklace rack and in my jewelry box. A lot of the necklaces are fancier than I normally wear (because I’m not generally a fancy, sparkly kind of girl), and some of them aren’t my style but I keep them for sentimental reasons. The real reason I don’t wear those,
A few days ago, a series of pretty minor circumstances collided in my life to plunge me into a very bad, very sad afternoon. I could detail the situations that led me there, but I don’t want this to be about that. They really aren’t that big of a deal, anyway, and I don’t want to take attention away from where I’m headed. In any case, as the sun sank
Happy new year, friends! My hope is that you had a truly special Christmas and that your new year is off to a good start. Sometimes we put so much pressure on the new year that when it actually comes, it has the same effect on our emotions as a much-anticipated birthday: we looked forward to it so much….but it came and went and nothing really changed. We’re still the
Hey, friend. I know how you might be feeling. You might just want to throw in the towel and quit. Just give up altogether. It might be an issue of mental illness, in which case I plead with you to seek help. Reach out. Don’t for a second think no one will understand or that no one will want to walk through this with you. You are not alone
During the first few months of my freshman year in college, I fell in love. I was away from home for the first time in my life, and everything was so new and fresh…but I was lonely and desperate and in a pretty bad place. Every morning began with the disheartening realization that yes, I was still there at school…and every night ended with a gut-level sigh and one simple thought: I want
