The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

  I’ve been writing again.  Writing as in writing novels.  It’s both magical and terrifying.  I’m not exactly sure why this is but I think with anything that you love there is the potential of both healing you or breaking you.  It’s the risk of caring and hoping. Last night as I was brushing my teeth and dealing with a very upset stomach, I thought about all the things you don’t write about in your stories.  Upset stomachs and the results of them being one.  Or brushing your teeth or going to the bathroom or burning breath or blisters or BO or a million other unpleasant things.  But in reality those uncomfortable, messy, ugly, smelly parts are what make up a good portion of our lives.  Why don’t we write about them?  I mean, no one wants to read about a good bout of diarrhea do they?   Or do we?   Maybe we do.  I mean, not the nitty gritty details, but maybe we want to know we aren’t alone in our imperfections.  That ...

Kindness. It's like the most wonderful thing ever. But so is honesty and sometimes, I like it even more than kindness. I think we often, in the fear of being unkind, are not honest when we should be.  This lack of honesty creates all sorts of bad behaviors in ourselves and in our friends and family and people we interact with. Lots of crap situations happen because we are too afraid of just telling the truth--even if it's hard to hear or say.  Lately, well, this year, I've been really working on examining myself and truth and honesty and kindness and how I interact.  I've come to a few realizations, but first, let me define honesty. To me, honesty is when we tell what's inside our hearts and let what is important to us be known.  Honesty is NOT an excuse to say, Yeah, let me be honest, you're a crap sister or you're a bad husband or you really DON'T understand how to do your hair.  No, being honest is saying, I don't think I can actually be r...