“It’s just not normal!” “It’s very unconventional!” “That’s just flat-out weird!” Those are some of the responses I receive when I let people know that my youngest daughter went with her step-siblings {read more}

When I met her, she was all wide eyed and freckle faced. A puppy dog, brimming with the need to love and be loved. Wounds still fresh from her parents’ divorce. So accepting of my trying to heal them. The love between us was instantaneous and mutual. Soon {read more}

Crying and screaming was coming from the direction of my daughters’ shared bedroom. I ran down the hall, in no big hurry, to investigate. Because really, crying and screaming from my daughters’ shared bedroom was quite normal around here. When {read more}

Darkness would fall over them, their eyes would blaze red, cackling would be heard as they cursed “I hope you have one JUST LIKE YOU!” “What. EVER.” I would say, and sulk off to my pig sty of a room, thinking that it wouldn’t {read more}

Dear Me, Hey. Can you believe how fast time has flown? No? Me either. Well, I’m going to cut to the chase. The reason for this letter is simple. To remind you. Remember. Remember how it felt to always feel that, no matter what you did, no matter {read more}

If the psychic I had visited over 20 years ago had warned me that I would be divorced and remarried, raising three biological children AND two step-kids…FULL TIME… I would have laughed in her face and demanded the gold coins laid across her palm right {read more}

Very early on in our marriage, while my husband was still at work, I took the four kids out for ice cream. An after school treat. They were so little then. So cute…from preschool through first grade. All of them looking like they could, very {read more}