Bad Weather And Mutual Aid

We’re readying ourselves for some pretty intense winter storms here in Michigan. I’m not sure I fully believe all the sensational articles and Facebook posts calling it the storm of a generation, but we’re absolutely preparing to be stuck for a few days to a week. I’m lucky enough to have a home, and I […]

Matthew Berdyck

A while back, I travelled to Ohio to testify in my friend’s CSPO case against a man that had stalked both of us for years. You’ll be happy to know my friend was successful and was granted his CSPO against our stalker. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the CSPO only escalated things.  Leading up […]

On Grief And Tokenism And Friendship And A Hundred Billion Other Things

For two and twenty and two hundred and a thousand days and minutes and years and seconds and millenia I’ve been thinking about my friend. I don’t care that I walked away last year, they were still my friend. I didn’t walk away by choice. I always wanted them to come back to me. I […]

On Friendship

Yesterday, I got home from Bug’s appointment and my house was a mess. It’s been a mess since the sleepover, and honestly, a bit longer. I find it hard to keep up on housework. It wasn’t dirty. Dishes are usually done nightly, but it’s not unusual to find baskets of clean but unfolded laundry in […]

On Being Heard

My son has ADHD. We’ve known this for years. For years we’ve struggled with uninterested and unwilling medical professionals and educators who dismissed it as not a big deal. I’m not sure how, as it’s pretty clear that he was struggling. It took years of fighting for services before I found the magic words to […]

For My Trans Siblings

I want to find the words that will comfort and reassure you. I’ve written and deleted so many sentences and paragraphs and I have none that do this, or any of the other tragedies the community has faced lately any justice. Instead, I leave you with the words of Andrea Gibson in their poem Ashes […]

The Chaos Of Sleepovers

My son’s best friend came over for a sleepover this weekend. Picture my two, plus two bonus kids building box forts and chasing each other around an old, cramped, 1850s house while four cats, a dog with dementia, and two adults in their thirties do their best to avoid being run over by the howling […]

Our Pink House

When my kids and I lived with my ex husband we didn’t really have stable housing. When we left, we did so with no idea where we would end up long term. I knew we had a short term place to stay, and we had a rough plan to go back home to Canada that […]

A Mourning Routine

Most mornings, I wake up at quarter to six. I climb out of bed with my cat at my heels. First, we climb the stairs to our one bathroom. While I pee, she perches on the sink next to me and headbutts me for kisses. I wash my hands, and leave the sink on for […]

Work

My friends are constantly telling me to rest, to slow down, to take time for myself. I’m always arguing that I really don’t do much of anything. If I slow down anymore I’ll be dead.  Thing is, we define work differently. To my friends, the degree to which I show up for people is work. The […]