We bloom when the conditions are right

Humans love schedules and agendas and timelines. We love knowing when things "should" happen and then judging ourselves and others when they don't happen at that time. We start when our children are in the womb, reading books like "What to Expect When You're Expecting." Then when our kids are born we immediately start measuring them against things we've read, things we've heard, and things other babies are doing. They should be eating solids by now...they should be crawling by now...they should be walking by now...and on and on. We don't stop after infancy either. Then it becomes they should be reading by now...they should be playing a sport/instrument/role...they should have their post-graduation life figured out...etc. And we definitely carry these made up timelines into adulthood as well. Then we panic when the milestones aren't hit at the "right" time. 

But here is what we learn from Nature: Flowers don't necessarily bloom at the time we expect; they bloom when the conditions are right for them to bloom. I have two so-called "Christmas" cacti that decided to bloom in mid-January, after two years of not blooming at all. I have spring roses that decided to bloom in winter because temps were in the 70s. And I am a woman in her late 40s who is only just now starting to feel truly aligned with her purpose after years of feeling like I was missing the mark.

Nature doesn't bother with what the calendar says or with what we imagine is the right time. Nature thrives when the conditions are right, and it adjusts to protect itself when the conditions aren't right. Humans would do well to take this lesson to heart. None of us--and none of our kids--are behind in this life. We are just where we are, waiting for the conditions to be right for us to bloom. 

But that doesn't mean we don't have to put in the work to be ready to bloom when the conditions are right. Maybe we need an extra season of dormancy. Maybe we need to take in more nutrients. Maybe we need to focus our energy on strengthening our roots, doing the work that no one sees. Maybe we just need to trust that blooming is still what we were made for and that it will happen. We need to stop judging ourselves and our kids so harshly and comparing ourselves and them to others. We just need to pay attention to the conditions in our own lives and bloom with boldness when the time is right. 

 Christmas cacti in mid-January

December roses

Good-bye 2025, Hello 2026

It is very hard to believe we have already come to the end of another year. This one was a wild one that brought an abundance of both beauty and pain. Mike had four business trips to Florida this year, and I got to tag along on two of them. The two of us also took two vacations to Mexico--one to Puerto Vallarta and one to Cabo San Lucas. I took several solo trips to New Braunfels to visit Liv and a solo trip to Cairo, Egypt to attend Clay's 8th grade graduation. And we took the entire family to Breckenridge, CO for our first blended family vacation. Mike also had solo business trips to New Orleans and Las Vegas, and another to Scottsdale in October that I got to go along on. Unfortunately, at the end of that trip, he found out his company was undergoing a restructuring and that his job was being terminated, so he has bravely been going through the process of trying to find a new job, which has provided lots of opportunities for growth and self-reflection. We are anticipating him finding just the right thing in the new year. 

Other big happenings included me leaving Starbucks after five and a half years and taking a temporary nanny job. I also took as many yoga classes as I could fit in my schedule, took a six-week long pottery class, and enrolled in yoga teacher training, which I will graduate from at the end of January. Mike renovated our master bedroom after a major water leak, completely overhauled our guest bedroom because it needed some updates, and made some repairs to our garage space after a different water leak. We also did a lot of work on my Flower Mound house after all the kids moved out of it in January and were able to get it sold in August. 

We are so proud of and thankful for our kids! Liv got engaged and finished her first year of OT school. Weston graduated from WGU after just one year and is currently working on getting his teaching certificate. Max went for the second year in a row on a mission trip to Belize and has started his senior year of high school. And Clay has started high school and is excited about his wrestling season. Kai has been working at a radio station and Door Dash. Reid got his private pilot's license and his instrument rating and took Mike and I for a night flight that was absolutely incredible. Aiden is heavily involved in a leadership organization at his school and is looking forward to the upcoming lacrosse season. And Quinn and his band had an amazing marching season and got 9th place at the state competition. 

My words for 2025 were Present and Contentment/Acceptance, and I have really tried to embrace being present with myself and with others and finding contentment and acceptance in the good seasons, the bad seasons, the waiting seasons, and all the other seasons. I have worked hard to see and be the good in the world. I have tried to be grateful for all the gifts this year has given, even when they have been wrapped in circumstances that I wouldn't have chosen. I have chosen to believe the best and to trust the story that is unfolding, even if it isn't how I would have written it. 

I'm excited for all the new year holds! Inspired by my yoga journey, my words for 2026 are Strength, Balance, and Flexibility. These apply to my physical world, but probably more importantly, to my mental state of being. I feel like beautiful things are coming in 2026--for me and for you! Wishing you love and light and peace and joy in the new year! 

The Clay Will Become What It Wants To Be

I spent the last six weeks taking a pottery class where we did hand building as well as wheel throwing. I was in a season of betweenness, and I really needed a creative outlet. I specifically chose pottery because I have always had a bit of a fascination with it, and because I knew I probably wouldn't be very good at it, and that seemed like a great way to learn some valuable lessons along with some new skills. I was certainly right about that and can definitely say I learned a lot. 

At the beginning of every class we would start with a few lumps of damp, grayish-white clay that had no personality whatsoever. Then our teacher would show us an example of something we could make but would soon set us free to "create whatever we wanted." Being very new to the craft and prone to rule following, I pretty much stuck to the projects of the day, but I never really produced the true likeness of the teacher's example. And even he, with more than a decade of experience as a professional potter, said he wouldn't be able to replicate his work exactly. Perfect was not my goal, and I always felt delighted that I had managed to make anything at all and found each piece beautiful in its own way. Each classmate brought their own ideas about what they wanted to get out of the class. One of my classmates rarely stuck to the prescribed project and made some truly interesting pieces that she conjured up purely from her imagination. Another classmate broke down in tears and scrapped many of her projects when they didn't turn out "just right," even though I couldn't really see anything wrong with them. But, as our teacher reminded us over and over, there was no one correct approach.

In hand building it was difficult to get the clay to a uniform thickness or to master the detail work. On the wheel, it was easy to get the clay too off-center, leave it too dry, get it too wet, or stretch it too thin. If you had something specific in your head when you started, you could almost count on something going awry and then having to take some measure or other just to salvage the project--the image in your head be damned. And never once did all six of the students end up with things that even remotely resembled what the other students had made or what the teacher had shown us. By the third class we had embraced a motto: The clay will become what it wants to be. And from that moment, the whole class became an exercise in letting go of the idea you had in your head and just accepting whatever happened. The concept freed many of us up to just enjoy the process and be delighted with whatever we created. 

Once the clay had become something--a beautiful, wonky, lovely, unique thing--it had to dry out for a week or so before it could be fired. The heat of the kiln was sure to shrink the pieces and sometimes reveal serious and not-so-serious cracks. And once it was fired, each piece had to be glazed. We could read on the containers the colors of the glazes and, for most, see tiny example tiles of the finished colors, but many of the glazes looked almost the exact color of the clay when first applied or not at all like the finished product, as the heat of the kiln during the second firing was what was needed to bring out the trueness of the hue. There was a skill to applying just the right amount of glaze too (especially tricky since we couldn't always tell where it had been applied). Too much, too close to the bottom of the piece, and it would melt onto the kiln and pretty much guarantee chips in the finished product; too little, and the color would barely show up at all. It was super hard to predict what the finished pieces would actually look like, and it was a little like a wonder-filled Christmas morning when we arrived to pick up our finished pieces. 

I was enthralled with all my pieces and genuinely appreciated what each of them had become--with and without my help. I did a show-and-tell with my family and was practically doing a happy dance seeing everything displayed on the table. I have a couple of "bowls" that decided to become "planters" because of unplanned holes that appeared in their bases during the process. I have a vase that fell in on itself on the wheel and turned out to be one of my favorites because it is so unusual and interesting and 100% non-replicable. I have coffee mugs with awkward handles, but the coffee this morning tasted better out of a mug I made myself. None of the things I made is perfect, but every one of them is beautiful to my eyes and to my heart. I did the best I could with the raw materials I had and the skills I learned along the way, but without a doubt, the clay became what it wanted to be, which is what makes each piece so valuable to me.

Examining my work got me thinking about raising kids. It's a process. And people do it differently. And there are a lot of things that can factor in to how the final product comes out. But even if things don't go according to our original plan--which they rarely do--there aren't really a lot of ways to do it wrong. Even the mistakes we parents make along the way can become something lovely. My finished product will not look like yours. It will likely not even look like the picture I had in my head. We start with similar raw material that is moldable, but ultimately "the clay will become what it wants to be," and the only real truth is that the final product will be absolutely beautiful and unique. 

The last few months have held frequent reminders for me to accept things as they are and to see the beauty in what is. My kids are not all turning out according to the images I had in my head or according the societal "instructions," but they are all turning out to be exactly who they are meant to be, and it is absolutely the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed. 

Rain but no rainbow

There is a pretty good chance this post may make some people uncomfortable because it's real and raw and doesn't really have a happy ending or a moral, and stories like that aren't everyone's cup of tea. There is also a chance that some people will be comforted by an untidy story that they might be able to relate to. And some people, coming upon this blog by chance, may see that it's called "Chasing Rainbows" and think it is all about positive experiences. It isn't, though I certainly do try to find the rainbows in the midst of life's storms most of the time. To see a rainbow, the sun will be behind you and the rain will be in front of you. You will not see the rainbow while looking toward the sunny part of the sky. In fact, the best rainbows will be seen when you face the darkest part of the sky. And that's what this blog is about: facing the darkness and finding the light and encouraging others to do the same. But not this particular post. 

I'm not going to candy coat it: Life has been hitting extra hard the last few months. It's not one thing, but it is one thing after another, and the pile feels pretty crushing at the moment. I have been swinging daily between anxiety, which says, "Everything matters a lot," and depression, which says, "Nothing matters at all," and PTSD, which says, "The things that used to matter most, still matter most." I'm not writing this from the other side of it like I often do, when I've discovered the lesson and am ready to implement the growth. I'm just in it. Right now, I don't see the rainbow or the sun or anything other than dark thunderclouds. The storm is too all-consuming, and new storms keep rolling in. There is not yet any light in the sky with which to make a rainbow. Today is better than yesterday--which is why I have even found the motivation to open my computer to try to string words together with the hope of unraveling some of the tangles of my mind--but the skies are still very gray. I am staring at the darkest place in the sky, wishing I could see the rainbow, and all it is doing is staring right back at me and continuing to spit in my face.

I feel a bit like Lt. Dan in "Forrest Gump" when he shakes his fist at the sky and challenges the storm to a showdown. I'm more of a tears person than a fist person, though. I tend to experience my emotions (all of them) with tears, and the tears have been pretty free flowing in the last few months, despite whatever happy images you may have seen of me on social media. (And, of course, life is not ever all bad, so those images are real, but they don't feel like the complete story of me.) I have experienced tears of sadness, hurt, anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, stress, regret, shame, guilt, resentment, helplessness, hopelessness, self-pity, compassion, concern, and uncertainty. And there have also been tears of pseudo-resignation as my higher self works to just accept things as they are. But, honestly, these have not been tears of genuine resignation, because in my heart I don't really want to quit fighting and raging at the things Life is handing out at the moment. So much of it feels unfair. So much of it feels like it is out of my control. So much of it feels unfixable. And I'm not yet ready to look for the silver lining or even to pretend like one exists. 

So here I am raging at the storm, hoping I might come out of it at some point in a peaceful state like Lt. Dan did, but not fully ready to accept the lessons (and losses) it has for me, because what I really want is for things to be the way they were before the storms hit. I want a season with calm water, with sunny skies, with time to just float and not feel like I am having to constantly bail water or exhaust myself with trying to keep the boat from capsizing. But that is definitely not the season I'm in, and it seems like a lie to pretend otherwise. 

So, yeah, no happy ending. But you can't say I didn't warn you. As much as I wish it was otherwise, not every storm comes with a rainbow. And sometimes another storm hits before you can recover from the last one. That's reality. And that's where I am. 

(I do believe the sun will come out again eventually and that rainbows are still possible. But that magic is clearly for a different time, which I could have waited for and written about, but the need to be authentically me in this moment got the best of me.)

Running together

Early this morning, my two oldest boys and I went for a run together. But, ironically, we didn't run together at all. We all had different needs, agendas, and skills. One boy was following a specific training program that required him to maintain a certain lowish heart rate for the duration of the run, which dictated he would move at a slower pace. One boy essentially just wanted to get it over with and so was trying to run the route as quickly as possible. And I took my own path and moved at my own pace, which was something between the other two. We all ran about two miles, in roughly the same location, but one finished in under 13 minutes, one took about 20-25 minutes, and one completed the run in 34 minutes. Before we parted ways and as we were reunited, we gave words of encouragement and support, and we were all proud of ourselves and each other. And we all agreed that the whole point of going together was accountability. None of us had really wanted to get up and go running at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. I think we all admitted to formulating texts to the group in our minds to bow out before going ahead and getting out of bed because we didn't want to appear weak or like we were backing out on our agreement. Knowing others were doing the hard work to get up and to go running was good motivation to just do it.

I actually love that we were all doing the same thing--and we were doing it togetherish--but we were all doing it our own way. And each way was worth celebrating. The whole experience got me thinking about how every person is traveling through life togetherish, sort of moving in the same direction, which is forward. But we will not all have the same outcomes. Some will run through it faster. Some will move deliberately slower. Some will have more natural skill. And some will have to work a bit harder to develop the skills they need just to get through it. None of us are doing it incorrectly, though if we measure everyone else by our own skills or agendas or needs we might have the impression that some people are getting ahead or some people are falling behind. Everyone is just running their own race, and all we need to do is be supportive and encouraging. We need to celebrate all the victories, because the one thing we all have in common is that getting through it is hard for each person in their own way. We can allow the way we show up to encourage and motivate others, even when we are facing our own struggles. We can run separately but still be in it together.

Jumping at shadows

In mid-July, my 17-year-old son invited me to start running with him. Trying our best to beat the heat, we were heading out just a little after sunrise every morning. But with the start of school, we have had to push our morning runs up, and now we are running while it is still dark out. Max has continued to brave the unlit, uneven, partially unpaved two mile trail that runs around the neighborhood, with the confidence of a young man in peak physical condition who has never suffered a serious sports injury. I, however, am a middle-aged woman, not in peak physical condition, who is just eight years out from destroying my ACL and meniscus and enduring the surgery and recovery that went along with that, so I choose to stay on the lighted sidewalks of the inner loop. There is some light, yes, but it's not like the areas where I am running are bright enough for me to see everything around me. And sometimes the light seems best only at conjuring extra dark shadows, which move around as if possessed. 

One day in the last week, I literally jumped off the sidewalk into the street (not to mention almost out of my skin), not once, but twice during a single run, startling at some wavy shadows dancing around on the sidewalk in front of me. And, then, of course, upon closer inspection, I felt silly for being so scared of NOTHING. Thankfully, there aren't many neighbors up and about at that hour in our neighborhood, so my embarrassment did not have any witnesses. 

But I got to thinking about this tendency to jump at shadows, and it made me consider that this concept is very similar to the way anxiety works. Frequently, with an anxious brain, there is only a perceived threat rather than an actual one. But it FEELS real. Real enough to make you jump out of harm's way. Or freeze up. Or fight imagined monsters. Or spiral into more and more worst case scenarios. I used to really hate this about my brain--making a big deal out of things that turned out to be nothing and feeling like I couldn't stop it or control it. 

I still wish I didn't have such an overactive amygdala (the "fight or flight" center of the brain, specializing in fear and anxiety), but I have learned to appreciate this part of my brain. It desperately wants to protect me. Instead of fighting against the anxiety now, I'm learning to embrace it, to say, "This feels scary, but I can get through it and it might actually be okay." This part of my brain is trying to help me, not hurt me. It is a friend, not an enemy. But even well-meaning friends sometimes need to be questioned when they are offering advice. Thankfully, I'm learning to examine my thoughts and question their validity and their helpfulness. Yes, I jumped when the shadows startled me, but I didn't stop running. I didn't refuse to go again the next day. And if there had actually been a snake on the sidewalk, I would have been so grateful for the instinct to jump. Anxiety is no small thing, and for some people it is truly debilitating, but sometimes there are ways to manage it so that you don't have to be ruled by the shadows. You may still see the shadows and they may still feel uncomfortable because of their shiftiness, but you are allowed to take a breath and ask a question and reexamine the situation once you have more information. I'm thankful I have a friend in my mind that wants to keep me safe. But I'm also thankful that I can sometimes tell her I appreciate her concern but I'm good. 

Repairing the cracks

After our road trip to Colorado last month, I noticed a tiny--probably smaller than the tip of my pinky fingernail--chip in my windshield. Having learned from experience, we immediately bought a windshield repair kit and patched up the crack to keep it from spreading. That gives me a certain degree of confidence that I will not have to replace the entire windshield for this one tiny ding. It is not really in my line of sight but my eye is drawn to it every time I get in my car, and I have been pondering that little pock mark quite a lot lately. 

The car I was driving prior to this one also had a small crack in the windshield. I didn't bother to repair it, since it wasn't in my line of sight and it didn't seem like too big a deal. But, over time, with cold winters and hot summers, the little crack started to spread. I still didn't bother to do anything about it, because it still wasn't in my line of sight and fixing it seemed like a waste of money. It seemed like a problem not worth investing in. But eventually, the crack made its way across the entire windshield, and there came a day when it actually seemed like it could possibly be a little unsafe. Like if just the wrong kind of pressure was applied, the whole windshield would come crashing in. My now-husband, who I was just dating at the time, became concerned. And one day while I was at work, just before taking off on a long road trip with my kids, he hired a company to replace the entire windshield. It was a kind gift, and I was truly touched by the gesture and may have fallen a little in love with him as a result. Ignoring the problem wasn't making it go away, and I was thankful someone who cared about me stepped in to help when I clearly wasn't taking care of the problem on my own.

So why am I thinking about cracks in windshields, you ask? Well, it's because I can see the cracks in my life, and I have learned from experience that it is better to repair them while they are small than to wait until they spread to a point of destruction. Not all of them are impeding my ability to go about my days. But they are there and they are real. There are broken pieces doing their best to act with wholeness, integrity, kindness, goodness, and love. But they are still broken pieces with sharp edges and a propensity to spread to others and create potentially unsafe spaces if the work isn't done in a timely fashion. They are easy to ignore. Until they aren't. Small issues not dealt with become big issues that demand attention, sometimes in very unlovely ways. Cars are meant to be driven, and in driving them, dings will happen. In the same way, lives are meant to be lived and there will inevitably be some collateral damage. However, if you can find the tiny cracks--the toxic attitudes, the unhealthy mindsets, the learned destructive patterns, the emotional immaturity, etc.--and work to repair them before they become problematic, you might just be able to save the whole windshield. You may still be able to see the crack, just like I see the little ding every time I get in my car. But it is only a reminder of the hazards of the road and a messenger bringing a sense of gratitude that allows me to proceed with confidence, knowing it will not destroy me or harm the people I care about because it has already been dealt with.