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Being Fearsome: Motherhood, Grief, and Unexpected Grace

By Joanna Penn CooperNovember 5, 2019

The day before my uncle John’s funeral, I sleep most of the day after school drop off, the night before having been largely consumed by anxiety and grief, a mind untethered and roaming. I wake up to a voicemail from the vice principal of my son’s school, telling me that there has been an incident…

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La Sagrada Familia

By Angie RominesSeptember 16, 2019

We considered it an act of grace that every child we saw in Barcelona was wailing.

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Between Friends: Raymond Carver’s “Viewfinder”

Decades ago, in Orange County, California, Jennifer Hawk and Tania Runyan shared a number of high school classes but traveled in different social circles. Tania was scary-nerdy-awkward—E.T. and Laura Ingalls’ lovechild—and Jen was scary-sexy-cool—black eyeliner, skateboards, and bands Tania couldn’t pronounce. But they’ve developed a deep relationship over the years, sharing their lives and their…

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Earthbound Hymn

By Riane KoncJuly 15, 2019

My daughter is the star of her first music festival: she is nine months old, pink cheeked and fat. We’ve dressed her in a cotton tank-top, a screenprint of a kitten wearing a flower crown. It’s almost too cute, but this is a strategy: I’m hoping that if she’s fussy, festival-goers will find the baby…

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I Don’t Want To Be This Kind of Hero

By Joanna Penn CooperMay 13, 2019

I took a nap in the day and dreamed I was volunteered by someone to cook dinner for a woman with a newborn. I was to cook for her four times just after the birth of her child, and I was sort of bellyaching about it to a friend, the expense and the time. But…

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Witness and Permission: On Seeing and Being Seen in Life and Art

By Joanna Penn CooperMarch 21, 2019

This winter has been a difficult season.  I emerge from it wondering about the edges of my griefs and my joys, feeling around for my moorings, realizing in a new way the isolation of the single parent, the reality of mortality for aging and ill family members, the uneven texture of heartbreak, how it feels…

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Tahlequah’s Grief

By Cathy WarnerSeptember 5, 2018

On July 24, an orca calf died off the coast of British Columbia within thirty minutes of birth and Tahlequah, the calf’s mother, carried her dead daughter on her rostrum, pushing her through the Salish Sea from Canada to the U.S. and back again in a funeral procession that logged a thousand miles and lasted…

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I Am Not a Mother: I’m a Human Being

By Tania RunyanMay 28, 2018

“You’re not a good mom!” My ten-year-old daughter shouted as she stomped up to her room. “Good moms don’t throw paper plates at their children!” Of course, this declamation can be proven false. A good mother would construct a Chinese kite out of a paper plate, toss it toward her daughter at the perfect moment…

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Sowing the Seeds of Love

By EDMay 1, 2018

My daughter asked me to bring some food to the swim meet when I came. I said, “Maybe.” She rolled her eyes, and grumbled as if I never do anything for her, though I’d just supplied the ride she needed to participate in her event. She was still mad that I had looked through her…

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My Mother, My Daughter, Myself

By Caroline LangstonApril 19, 2018

My daughter Anna Maria was born on Orthodox Easter Sunday—Pascha—in 2009. That year, the date fell on April 19. While her brother had blasted his way into the world at the very bottom of the night, in a delivery that was swift and surreal and unmedicated, my daughter arrived in the late afternoon as the…

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