Tag: love
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25 Days of Giving Day Twenty-Three: Believe
In 1992 I was twenty-two years old and living in Chicago. The market was tough for recent college grads, and after a part-time series of temp assignments and waiting tables, I took a job selling industrial products on the south side of town. It wasn’t a career move by any stretch, but it paid the bills and afforded…
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25 Days of Giving Day Twenty-One: Forgive and Forget
Everyone wants to be heard. It’s a natural, inherent desire that often has the power to lift you up, and can sometimes bring you down. The up? Kind words, personal validation, anything that lightens your load. The down? Meaningless conflict, petty arguments, self-righteous posturing that takes the air out of a room and returns…nothing. The…
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25 Days of Giving Day Fifteen: Speak Up for Someone Who Can’t Speak for Themselves
Not long ago, I found myself rushing to the grocery store to get something one of my kids needed the next day for school. It was late and I was tired, preoccupied, and annoyed. Like most moms, I was running behind an endless to-do list that seemed to square itself and multiply whenever I wasn’t looking. Snow…
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25 Days of Giving Day Four: Find the Silver Lining
When I was two years old my parents got divorced. I was lucky in a way, because at the time I was too young to understand that separation, at it’s most basic level, is the physical manifestation of pain being split in two. By the time I’d turned five Mom had remarried. We left Atlanta, where…
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25 Days of Giving Day Three: Free Up Some Space
It never fails that when I’m in line at Costco with a double-wide full of everything I don’t need, some guy is patiently standing behind me with three packages of flan. So I step aside. I’m always surprised at how appreciative people are when I let them go first, but when I think about it…
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25 Days of Giving Day Two: Say Thank You
Thank you. Why are two of the simplest words in the English language sometimes so hard to say? When I was a senior in high school, I applied to two colleges. The first was the school I was destined to attend. The second? An afterthought, just in case the world’s largest sink hole, triggered by a flying unicorn…
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25 Days of Giving Day One: Pay A Stranger A Compliment
Greetings from the land of Gemini Girl in a Random World, better known as Siberia. It’s that time of year again, and instead of posting porn-inspired Elf on the Shelf pictures like everyone else you’re connected to on Facebook, I thought I’d try something new this holiday season. Inspired by a genuine lack of desire to…
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This is a Simple Story About Love
All a mother wants, above and beyond anything else in life, is for her child to be happy. It’s a subliminal inclination fueled by emotion, like the echo of a throb…a primal instinct driven by that first, curious flutter in the womb. And it never goes away. My grandmother is no different from any other…
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For The Voices We Can No Longer Hear
I’ve never really used the word “evil”. I don’t like it. Pronouncing it turns my mouth in the wrong direction and my face into an ugly sneer. The word is as powerful as the actions it’s meant to describe, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Even the juxtaposition of consonants and vowels is wrong, like…
READING BETWEEN THE PINES 