I approach buying clothes for my children with the same compulsive attention to my kids’ individual needs and wants that I bring to Christmas gift buying. Focused attention to my kids’ clothing needs is, for me, as much an embodiment of maternal love as cooking is for some moms. Finding a shirt that I just know one of the kids will love, zipping up a child’s heavy fleece jacket on a cold morning, watching them tear out the front door... Read more
All of our stuff can distract and overwhelm us, but it can also provide context. Our clutter can remind us that matter matters, that the bodies we inhabit and tend, the food we make and eat, the clothes and toys and mementos made or given or used with love can bind us to each other, and to those who came before and come after. Read more
At my local pool, people with limps and spots and wrinkles are the norm, and it's the statuesque blonde in a bikini who raises eyebrows. This is my kind of place. Read more
Note: I wrote this in the summer of 2009. I am reposting it here as summer approaches, as a reminder (to myself, above all) of how radically life can change us in surprising ways. I used to despise the summertime, for reasons I explain in this post. Now, I have become like a cat, chasing the sun through the day, craving its light and warmth for the relief it brings to body and spirit. Most days over the past couple... Read more
We Christians are sometimes taken to task for the way that we, when embroiled in difficult conversations about whether or not God exists, chalk things up to “mystery.” Our atheist/agnostic conversation partners see this (rightly, in some cases) as a cop out, as a way of saying, “I don’t really understand why I believe, but I do believe, so I’ll just say it’s a mystery, which will end the argument because what makes a mystery mysterious is that it remains... Read more
Blogger/author Rachel Held Evans wrote an excellent post last week titled Why Progressive Christians Should Care About Abortion. She traced her own history, from embracing an evangelical pro-life stance to her gradual understanding of abortion’s complexities, and recognition that those who are “pro-life” do not always support policies that sustain non-fetal lives, such as those of Iraqi civilians or victims of gun violence. She noted that criminalizing abortion does not necessarily make it happen less often. She argued for a... Read more
This is the story I told at this past weekend’s inaugural Speak Up storytelling event in Hartford. In my next email newsletter, I will include a link to the Speak Up podcast, which includes my telling this story to a live audience (with considerable more humor than comes through in the written version), along with six other fabulous, funny, moving stories told by warm and witty storytellers. To add your name to my mailing list for very occasional newsletters (four... Read more
Jennifer Gilmore’s story is enough to scare anyone away from open adoption. (It also provides the best supporting evidence ever for my contention that “Why don’t you just adopt?” might be one of the stupidest questions known to humankind.) After years of fertility treatments , Gilmore and her husband settled on an open domestic adoption. And then everything that could go wrong did. Numerous birthmothers selected them—and then the couple would learn that the birthmother didn’t really intend to place... Read more
Three autumns ago, I walked into a radiologist’s office after a follow-up mammogram. He pointed to my films on a computer screen, and before he spoke, I knew I had cancer. I saw the trouble clearly—a cluster of opaque white dots in the upper portion of my right breast. My cancer, a type called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), is curable through surgery and radiation. Although my two surgeries weren’t a walk in the park (particularly the first, in which... Read more
Questions around suffering and pain are stock in trade for me as a writer. I know that I can’t stand most Christian justifications (i.e., bullshit) for why terrible things happen. I know that even well-thought-out theological arguments around how God can be all-powerful, all-loving, and yet allow great suffering still fall far short for me. I believe that great good can come out of suffering, but I don’t believe that God either orchestrates or even actively allows specific instances of suffering... Read more
Ellen Painter Dollar
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