My mingling of Christmas with death and mysticism harkens back to my youth, when Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was a staple in our home. On holiday breaks from school after playing outside, the sunset came devilishly early. To beat back the darkness and cold, I would lie on the living room carpet by the fireplace and read, hands propped under my chin.
One week of solitude and my epic fail at freedom
So much has been written about making friends as we age, but no one gives you a How To Manual or instructions.
Democracy starts in the classroom — a parent’s dive into elementary school journalism
It is a sad day for our democracy and the First Amendment when teachers, even those of elementary schoolers, must fear teaching students how to be good citizens of the world, how to ask good questions and seek out answers.
What we mean when we say we miss newsrooms
If my former newsrooms were people I would be attending many funerals. 2,500 newspapers in the United States have closed since 2005. The country will lose one-third of its newspapers by 2025.
Shifting gears: Teaching my autistic daughter to drive
I can tell you the day I discovered freedom because I remember every intoxicating detail of the moment I drove alone for the first time after getting my driver’s license. Now, in what seems like a single heartbeat of time, my daughter is learning to drive.
I Raised My Child in a Shopping Mall
The word “should” is the enemy of all good things. This is what I teach her. When someone says you should do something, question why. Question the value of the person who is telling you that. Question the word should, always.
Support Alabama bill to increase the period when a sexual abuse survivor can sue
Alabama is actively participating in child abuse. I am not OK with this. Who would be?
With better gun laws, fewer people die.
I’ve written before about my personal connection to gun violence but only once in decades because that’s the only time I could bear to wade into how gun violence has shaped me as a person. Those waters are deep and murky.
On the other side of the tornado: 10 years later, we are still broken and also on the mend
I read somewhere that traveling is like coming home a slightly different person than the one who left. I feel the same way about the journey I’ve been on since an EF4 tornado upended my life, just as the earth felt moving below me, a real-world Tilt-A-Whirl as it loosened the foundation of my home.
My adult daughter was diagnosed with autism. It changed everything.
Nothing could prepare me for the unplanned beauty and fear of having an adult child diagnosed with autism.
A message for Lee County from a Tuscaloosa survivor: You will be brave after the storm
My daughter, a person I cannot live without, has moved on. Yet I had to consider – for five minutes in April, 2011 – living without her. Also that she may have to live without me. That moment as a parent never left me.
The Alabama Mothers We Lost in 2018
If anyone wants to know what it feels like to bleed to death, they can ask me.
Champion Tree deeply rooted in winning tradition
Over the years, the grounds crews added tree cradles to help support its large, heavy branches, to keep them off the ground, and from breaking and decaying. Over those same years the tree struggled to stand tall. I did too – through two divorces, and deaths of various family members and pets.
What it’s like to lose a loved one to gun violence
I peered over my grandfather’s casket, trying desperately to see – and wanting not to see – where the bullet hit his head.
What’s it like to graduate at 75? Ask my dad.
There is no playbook for going back to school at 75. Comical things happened
After six years, it’s still hard to feel normal today
In Tuscaloosa, where the trees grow sideways, we’ve passed the 50-yard-line on a decade and I’m scared. The duplicity of healing, coupled with the need to hold onto that awful moment, is difficult.
Do better Alabama: It’s time to operate in the sunshine and not in the shadows.
This week is Sunshine Week, a time when journalists everywhere will be perceived by the public as complaining about things we don’t have. But here is why this matters to everyone, not just journalists: An informed society is a better, more democratic society. Without all of the information, how can we make the best decisions?
Why having a baby almost killed me: My postpartum nightmare
Almost 14 years after one of the most difficult times in my life, I hope my words might reach someone who feels the same way I did for all of that time. Hope will find you.
Gov. Ivey has betrayed all women of Alabama
There is a special kind of betrayal – a cleaver-sized knife in the back – for the women of Alabama who thought maybe, finally, with a female governor we would get somewhere.
Here’s to you, YouTube
I met John and Hank Green and I agree completely with what Hank said: YouTube is so diverse that you can’t possibly be a fan of or follow everyone. But because of its a la carte nature, when you find a personality you like, you tend to stick with them.
EPIC Success Story: How one radical idea in education became a long-term success story.
As we grew emotionally, mentally and physically, we all realized that we were part of something spectacular. It was a land of fairy tale proportions.
Dear friends in Oklahoma: Hope will find you
Just beyond my back yard, people had died. How surreal the entire experience was.