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‘Parenting’ Category

  1. Boston: Talk About It.

    April 16, 2013 by admin

    I don’t know how to pray.

    I start, “Dear Lord Jesus,” and then the words don’t come. It’s as if I’ve arrived at a cliff and am staring off into a wide, empty chasm.

    How do you pray for the people, the situation, engulfed in the tragedy in Boston? How do you find words that mean anything, to reflect the deep, probing questions and sorrow and confusion that arise like smoke out of the horror?

    We’ve all said it. Our thoughts and our prayers are with you. But what does that really mean?

    Photo courtesy of Creative Commons, Vasanthakumar's photostream.

    Photo courtesy of Creative Commons, Vasanthakumar’s photostream.

    If someone were saying that to you, what would you hope it would look like in action?

    To me, because I am so removed from the situation (our lives went along quite as normal yesterday), my vow is to pay life forward in love. To not shield my family from the violence and terrifying realities that are shaking our world, but to talk to them about it and stress how important it is to, every day, keep on loving fiercely. And not loving just our family and friends (that’s easy), but showing love to those who need it most.

    “Be careful … how much of the news your children watch today,” I read in a Facebook post. “Be informed, but be mindful of the fact that there’s not much about today’s events that our children need to know. Repeated news reports will be fresh each time and young children especially will think the bombings are happening over and over again.”

    I gnaw on this thought for hours, not sure what to think of it. Because I won’t shield my three-year-old from this. He will come downstairs with his lamby and his angel blanket and ask to snuggle on the couch like he does every morning. He will see the news on the television and wait patiently for a cartoon.

    “Oooh, look at that smoke,” he will say. Then, when a reporter interviews a woman in a hospital bed who has a broken leg and is awaiting a skin graft, he’ll say, “She got hurt when she was running.”

    She was a spectator who was near the finish line to cheer on a friend. Her husband was “lucky” because he only suffered a shattered ear drum.

    But I won’t shield my little boy from this. Instead, I will wrap my arms around him and snuggle. I will tell him that there was a very bad explosion yesterday and that lots of people were hurt. I will tell him I love him and I will say it over and over again. And I will pray that he grows to have a heart for God and a heart to love and serve others, because I can’t ask for more than that.

    IMG_5021In our home, we will talk about why people do bad things. We won’t profess to have answers all the time. We don’t want to shatter innocence, but we do want to teach our little ones the raw beauty and importance of loving, above all else.

    In New York, an artist projected these words from Martin Luther King, Jr., on the side of a building:  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

    How do you cope? Be the light.

    How do you reflect your thoughts and prayers? Be the light.

    How do you respond? Be the light.

    Natasha Clark of the Huffington Post listed 8 ways that people are showing strength among darkness in Boston’s aftermath.

    However you process tragedy, I pray you will choose light over darkness. That’s the only way we as a human race can win.

     

     

    Category Life, News, Parenting, Quotes | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  2. The Biggest Investment You Can Make

    April 4, 2013 by admin

    Lately I’ve been zeroing in on the power of investing in relationships.

    Investing in people is something I feel called to do, as a writer, as a Christian, and simply as a person. I count myself lucky that my life as a full time writer and mom allow me so many opportunities to connect with people – both people I know well and people I don’t.leaves on missouri.omaha.oct09 007

    As humans, we are relational beings. Communication is key to understanding ourselves and understanding others. You’ve heard me say it before, that at its very base, writing is about communication. But another way of looking at communication? It’s simply an act of reaching out.

    When I started writing my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, this is what I knew: 1) I wanted to write for a living; 2) I had a few stories about my childhood that I had to get out on paper; and 3) Maybe someone would find the stories interesting.

    But what was I doing? I had no idea, really. I didn’t exactly set out to write a book. I did want to compile the stories in my head into some sort of order – and I wanted the stories to be artfully written – but why? Back then, I couldn’t have told you.

    But now (albeit a little late), I am starting to get it. Now, I realize that both the acts of writing and publishing Tough Love had a far broader purpose. My book is a way to connect with people (readers, writers, only children, Wyomingites, pick your label) who may have experienced even a sliver of what I did or wanted to understand something entirely new. In other words, by writing my story I set out to communicate and develop trusting relationships with those who would care about it.

    “Sharing goes to the core of what you do, and why it’s worth doing in the first place,” a fellow writer and friend of mine once observed.

    Hence my motto as a writer: “Bridging people through stories and expression.”Spring Mill 026

    “You want to find the people whose lives will be impacted by your work, your art,” writes social media consultant Dan Blank. And, he points out, it takes time to develop meaningful relationships and trust with others.

    What is your dream, really? I suppose it’s true that some writers simply aim for getting their name in print. But Blank nails the bigger dream of most artists:  “not just having a book with their name on it, but a true connection to readers whose lives you have shaped.”

    That’s it, right there. And whether I am developing a true connection via the written word or the spoken word – a phone call, a “How are you?” at the local library – I know that as a person, I am living out my true calling: to genuinely connect with others.

    Caring about other people will always matter, no matter what you do with your life.

     

    Category Books, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Social Media, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  3. “Home” Making

    March 12, 2013 by admin

    It has been two months since we rattled back into the Midwest with two vehicles packed to the gills, exactly no place to live and a standing reservation at the Best Western on the southern edge of the Kansas City suburbs. In some respects, it seems like we’ve been back in the Midwest for forever – as if we never left in the first place. In other respects, it seems like we just arrived yesterday.

    Life hasn’t quite slowed down for us yet. And of course with two little boys, a husband whose work schedule is forever fluid and changing and my own gnawing need to put words together and write, I wonder if that time of slow-down will ever come. I consider the word “routine” with longing, craving it like a piece of sweet decadent chocolate. Still, we aren’t quite settled here. Still, the kids wake up in the middle of the night. I drag myself out of my warm bed and go to them, then laugh to myself as I return to my own bed, flicking off the alarm that was (so many hours ago) strategically set for 6 a.m.

    I always feel so blessed when on my blog (or elsewhere) I run into a mother or mother-to-be who “gets it.” You know, that crazy anxiety of trying to do it all and be a champ at it all. I think at its richest, this flux time is fodder for material. I am living the book that’s yet to be written. It can’t be written right now because the story is still unfolding. We can’t very well write the book while it’s happening – because then we’re too focused on the writing to actually be living out those messy and wonderful moments.

    When Eli was still brand new, squinting his fresh eyes at the buzzing world around him, I found that my best writing came on my bed at 2 in the afternoon. There, in a weak attempt at rest while the baby slept, I lay with a legal pad and a pen, my mind too noisy to invite any form of sleep. I scribbled furiously, messily, caring little about handwriting or the neatness of ideas. My desperate goal: to get the words that flew around in my head out, somehow solidified and preserved. The writing may have lasted for just 20 minutes or a sentence. How many one-line prayers did I scribble in the margins? But words came, and they came from the deepest of places. Even after one or two hard sentences, I could look at that long piece of paper and feel good. Somehow cleansed. My world, after those brief moments, made a little more sense.

    The writing is becoming more regular these days, but still the routine emerges slowly, like cold molasses. Still I am mother first. Then wife. Then writer. But (and I know this will be true as long as I live) the need to write won’t let go. Even when I am covered in toddler pee and am holding a fussy baby in one arm while I clean up the mess. Even when I am pushing mashed sweet potatoes into a tiny bird-like mouth. Even when the piles of dirty laundry are stacked so high and there is dinner to get on the table and from upstairs a little voice hollers “Mom!” and my husband walks through the front door and wants a little love. Even then, that urge, that innate need to write, will stubbornly persist. And my self will not re-encounter its equilibrium until that need has been acknowledged, satisfied.

    How do you do it? Whether you’re a mother, a student, male or female, you, too, wear a lot of hats. How do you make time for your art? How do you prioritize the need and make it somehow align with your myriad other roles?

    Around here, we live one day (and yes, sometimes one moment) at a time. And, slowly, the story is being written, the masterpiece in its own time taking shape.

     

    PS: The next post, on Thursday 3/14, will pay some small reverence to the December shootings in Newtown, CT, exactly three months after the young gunman opened fire at an elementary school. It’s one writer’s way of processing tragedy the best way she knows how, via silent words. Come with a somber heart, or not at all.

    PPS – A much-delayed announcement: Thanks to your support, my readers, via new Facebook page “Likes” and new followers on my blog, $30 was donated to cleanup efforts following Super Storm Sandy. Thank you, for supporting my work and the power of communicating our life stories. You rock.

     

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  4. To Write Again: A Return to the Sweet Life of Art Making

    February 21, 2013 by admin

    So. Days melt into days, and weeks into weeks. Across five states and two time zones, from a place that perpetually feels like summer back to a place where winter is in full force and (amen) the weather comes and goes in seasons. It has been a long road from southern California back to Kansas City, the challenges of moving with two young kids fierce and at times unrelenting. Yet we have pulled through it, and in all the chaos, things are beginning to make sense again.

    Finally, we are emerging into a new normal. We are putting down roots here fast and hard. Desperately, we want them to stick because if we’re honest, this life of mobility, of pulling up our lives every one to two years to begin again in a new place, is just plain tough. It was the life of adventure five years ago, when we were still relatively newly married and without kids. Now, with two little boys in tow, we simply crave to be settled. For the wellbeing of our kids. For the wellbeing of our family.

    As I write, the wind outside is fierce, hurling hard snow against the upstairs windows. My little Eli, who was born in sunny California just seven months ago, can’t take his eyes off of the mean white stuff. I finished nursing him this morning, and he lay his head on my shoulder and snuggled into me, quiet. That’s odd, I thought. And I said out loud, ”Why are you so quiet?”

    Then I saw why. His eyes were wide open, staring intently out the window at the onslaught of blizzard.

    Snow. Something completely new to him.

    As I ease myself back into these waters of a writing life, I feel more and more at home. To be honest, I don’t know where my work will take me next. We have started over yet again, in a new community, a new place. Ideas throw themselves at me ruthlessly, and I snatch at them as if trying to catch beautiful butterflies in a net, wanting to keep them, study them, turn them over in my hands and then release them into the world again.

    I revisit old essays, wonder why some of them have remained untouched deep in a folder for so long. But the answer comes quickly. Mothering. Family. Life.

    Most important right now is that we have weathered a stretch of tremendous transition and upheaval. In this new normal, this new place we so much long to call “home” for the long haul, I am writing again. And dang, it feels good.

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Travel, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,, | 5 Comments

  5. Cans and Can’ts

    November 8, 2012 by admin

    I probably shouldn’t admit it here, but promotional efforts for my new book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood have more or less come to a standstill since I returned to California from my home state of Wyoming last month.

    For two solid weeks in Wyoming, I was out, reading and putting on writing workshops, engaging people in glorious conversation about the significance of telling our life stories. I met people of all ages with raw, captivating life experiences to share. I shared bits of my own life experience, exposing the wonderful, the challenging and the pivotal moments of growing up as an only child in rural Wyoming. Strangers and acquaintances came to know the strong and unforgettable characters who shaped my childhood: Great Uncle John, Grandpa Bucky, Mountain Man Chuck and that lady up in the Hoback who once danced naked. For two weeks, I was in author heaven.

    Then I returned with my family to California, and the realities of being a full time mom quickly settled back in. This is certainly not a bad thing – it is simply fact. My husband, an engineer who diligently worked while his wife and two sons were away in Wyoming, transitioned from a day shift to a night shift while we were gone. And that meant that upon our return to California, we had some major adjusting to do.

    For a while, all rhythm in our household was lost. Family dinner time was out the door, replaced with family time mid-morning and, if we were lucky, lunch together around the kitchen table.

    Settling back in to life as mom and wife proved harder than I’d expected, coming off of an exhilarating two weeks in my home state where Grandma and Grandpa were always around to help with the boys and where I had plenty of time to wear my writer’s hat. I felt like life as a writer had no choice but to take a backseat for a while. I fought it. I cried. I wondered what the fate of my first published book would ultimately be, if I was not out in the world pushing it for all I was worth.

    I am both a mother and a writer. This means that very often, something’s gotta give.

    The writer Hope Edelman acknowledged her realities as a writer and mother in a blog post on Brevity, sharing a list of what she can and cannot do as a wearer of multiple hats. The advantages? She is really good at budgeting time, and says she has experienced a whole range of emotions that have enhanced her writing. The disadvantages? In her own words, she can’t “spend three months at a writer’s colony … stay at literary events past 9:15 on a weeknight … shower every day … be a foreign correspondent.”

    Because I am a mother and a writer, I can snatch quiet moments as they come. I can multi-task – say, make an important phone call while I’m nursing my three-month-old, jot down an idea for a new essay on the back of a receipt in my three-year-old son’s preschool parking lot, confirm a book sale via email while kids catch five more minutes of TV. I can make two solid, blessed hours of work time pass in the blink of an eye. And, like Edelman, I can garnish loads of heartfelt material from the range of emotions that come with being a mom. Believe me, I have stories to tell.

    And because I am a mother and a writer, I can’t give readings or host writing workshops every day of the week. I can’t tackle my list of marketing ideas fast enough. I can’t blog as much as I want to nor be in conversation with fellow writers and readers as much as I’d like.

    For now, I just have to trust that, as mom and as writer, I am right where I need to be. My book is out. People are reading it, and the feedback is just heartwarming. I am so grateful and so humbled to all of those who have picked up a copy and have taken the time to read it. I hope there will be many more readers to come.

    Seasons come and go in our lives, and I think to some degree a level of chaos is always present. Finally, I feel like I am working my way back into a rhythm where I can wear the hats of both mother and writer, as family woman and book promoter. There’s a lot of work to do. But then again, there always is.

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  6. What is Your Life’s Theme?

    September 13, 2012 by katemeadows

    If you could pull one theme out of your life, what would it be?

    For me, that theme is “tough.” As in, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    I didn’t know this when I first set out to write a series of essays profiling the colorful characters of rural western Wyoming around whom I grew up. That series of essays now comprises my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press.

    The essays were, at first, quaint and almost fluffy, mere sketches of people and experiences in my life that I found interesting. One piece did not necessarily relate to another; they just sort of fell out of me, one by one, like stones. I knew I had to write them – but I didn’t exactly know why.

    It was a long time before a pattern started to emerge, some sort of thread or echo that started resonating within each piece. I realized I wanted to know how these people – people like big-bellied bachelor Uncle John, the rancher-turned-writer woman named Chris, and my wild and impulsive Grandpa Bucky– helped to shape my upbringing and, consequently, shape the woman I am today.

    The resounding thread? Each of the characters I wrote about exhibited some form of tough. And moreover, they displayed senses of toughness I never felt I had. Having to homestead on a desolate landscape so barren that nothing grew? Not me. Driving cattle home at four in the morning? Not me. Spending lonely winters alone in a boxy cabin miles off a main road? Not me.

    Through writing, I started to look hard at this theme of “tough” and ask myself, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    All of these things, yes. But wasn’t there more to the meaning of that word? If not, I realized, I wasn’t tough at all.

    Except I know I am tough. Just not necessarily in the ways a rural Wyoming life demands. Through writing, I realized that my notion of “tough” was narrow. By holding myself up so sharply against these people who had truly lived hard and noble lives, I had for far too long denied that “tough” badge for myself.

    Looking back on the essays prompted me to examine my life via other questions as well.

    If you could re-do any moment of your life, what would it be?

    If you could live one sweet and precious moment of your past, what would it be?

    Thinking about our lives from a variety of angles can help give us a better grasp on ourselves, who we really are. Peeking through multiple lenses can help us to better understand ourselves – who we have been, who we are, who we hope to become.

    The former New York Times and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen writes: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

    I am not yet 30 years old. As someone once told me, “You’re not old enough to write a memoir.”

    But in writing about my younger self, I discovered a powerful theme at work. It’s a theme that, piggybacked with a theme of confidence, I take with me into the wilds now of motherhood. It’s a theme that is molding me now, and a theme I believe will continue to shape me in the future.

    And all because once, I wanted to write about and therefore recall some colorful and strangely admirable characters of my past.

    Look at how these “tough” people defined me. Because of them – and because of the writing process – I am now tougher and more beautiful, a more complete person.

    You can receive a signed copy of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood here.

    So? What about you? What is your theme?

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  7. Book Publication and Birth: A Tale of Two Converging Loves

    September 4, 2012 by katemeadows

    I never meant for it to happen this way.

    I couldn’t have planned it if I tried.

    Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction.

    Here I am, though, with a new baby and two books being published this month. Yes, two.

    How? I don’t quite know, except that life happens.

    Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press, recounts my experience as an only child growing up among the raw and grisly characters in rural western Wyoming. It began in 2008 as a collection of essays for my Master’s thesis in creative nonfiction writing. I knew from the get-go I would go all the way with it, writing the pieces one at a time, piecing them together with a thread of a theme (what does it mean to be tough?), and eventually pursuing publication, sending out query after query until a “yes” finally came.

    The “yes” did come – but, unexpectedly, so did a positive pregnancy test, three days later.

    That “yes,” along with the blue “+” sign on the stick, came while I was knee-deep in work on my family’s small business history. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, commemorates the grit and determination of a small-town service, repair and retail shop doing whatever it took to survive off of a quiet western main street. I began the project while Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood grinded its way through the query mill, back before a pregnancy was even on the horizon. The business history was a grand effort in helping my family carve out its well-deserved legacy. It was to be for me a venture in self-publishing, my intention to learn the ropes of the trade to be better informed and equipped as a writer during this tumultuous time in the publishing industry. I planned to publish the “Bucky’s book,” as it affectionately came to be called, in June 2012.

    Then the nod came for Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    Then I got pregnant.

    In other words, life happened.

    And here I am, with a baby who was born the end of July, a book of essays to be published on schedule by a traditional publisher, and a self-published small business history that, due to life circumstances, was postponed for release until September – the month of the business’ annual grand open house.

    So we leave next week, traveling from California to Wyoming, where for the better part of the month I will be promoting my work. September will be a crazy month. But I can’t wait.

    I go into it with heart racing and eyes bright with excitement. Here are the moments where the hard, dogged work will be worth it. Finally, I will meet the finished products.  Works of art into which I put my whole self. I will get to talk about this craft I love so much. I get to share words, encourage others to share theirs, and talk about the value of preserving life stories and leaving legacies.

    This is work that I love. I am packing my bags now.

    Please, join me if you can. Click here for a list of events.  Stay tuned for upcoming readings and get-togethers in California. And, if you’re interested in using Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood as a pick for a book group, ordering copies of either book, or learning more about the crafts of creative nonfiction writing and/or telling your own life story, please get in touch.

    Writing, at its very core, is about communication. If I can reach people, if I can inspire and encourage, only then can I smile and say to myself, “Job well done.”

    Category Books, Bookstores, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  8. Imperfect Books

    August 21, 2012 by katemeadows

    I have a confession to make.

    I published an imperfect book.

    Why do I tell you this?

    Because, if I’m honest, it’s a bit of a jubilant thing for me.

    I am so much a perfectionist that I miss sometimes the whimsy, the messy and out-of-place pieces of life for what they really are: reflections of reality. I am known to take things too seriously, not laugh enough, not cut myself any slack.

    I had a vision when I set out to piece together the history of my family’s small business. That vision, after a year and a half, is nearly realized. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, is finished. Soon a box of what I hope to be beautifully crafted books will arrive. The moment of truth awaits on the doorstep.

    Will this book be loved by those who have a stake in it? Will it be treasured by those who have already purchased a copy?

    Even with its surefire blemishes – certainly there is a comma missing here, a missed paragraph indent here – I am daring enough to think so. I am also daring enough to say there is no such thing as a perfect book – because there is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect life – and that, in the end, it doesn’t matter.

    You know why?

    Because the readers of this book will focus on the meat of the thing – the language and the real-life stories that have stitched together a half-century of awe and struggle in a slice of small town America.

    The readers will see past the missed commas and indents and any other small slight to what really matters: lasting stories that are communicated on the page, a shared dialogue.

    A writer can work and work and work on a book and still, it will never be fully ready to enter the world. It’s a bit like having kids: you’re never truly ready to become a parent.

    But at some point, you set aside your fear and insecurities, the need for everything to be just so, and you say a prayer and you jump.

    If you can look beyond the missing comma, the stray hair – or, staying with the parent metaphor, the kitchen floor that is sticky with spilled orange juice – you will see a bigger, messier and more beautiful picture that is entirely worth embracing.

    You might smile to yourself, allow yourself a sweet deep breath and think, “Yes. This, this is worth it.”

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family History, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,, | 8 Comments

  9. Life in the Trenches

    August 14, 2012 by katemeadows

    Mark Twain is known to have once said this: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

    When we sit down to write, be it fiction or nonfiction or something entirely different, how important it is that we are cushioned by some life experience. How important it is to our careers as writers that we spend time in the trenches, digging through the dirt and getting dirty, beautifully dirty.

    Copyright 2011, Kate M