Tag: love
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Birthday Girls and Cheerleaders
I officially have no minor children—my baby is eighteen. It feels impossible, the overnight transition to adulthood for this child who’s always been my shadow. But she’s a grownup now. She still needs Mama, though. I guess daughters always do. She wanted a tattoo for her birthday. So on Friday afternoon, we took her out…
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Dog Days: Christmas Sweaters!
Today was a big day at the Girard house! Another snow day—day four and counting of no school for Marcy. (She’s still in bed.) But the weather didn’t prevent the UPS truck from stopping at our house. And it delivered a much-anticipated package from Chewy—Christmas sweaters for the doggies! OK, perhaps the excitement was one-sided.…
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Becoming Ourselves
On unexpected surprises, heartache, and the joy that follows This is the most personal essay I’ve ever written—and the one that matters most to me. Becoming Ourselves is the story of my family’s journey through change, acceptance, and the unbreakable bonds that hold us together. It’s about what it means to love your children exactly as they…
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Drive On, Young Woman
MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER, Marcy, finally has her driver’s license. She turns eighteen on Friday, and I say it’s about time she started driving on her own. But a part of me isn’t ready. There’s something about knowing my youngest will be a child for only five more days that stirs discomfort in me. It doesn’t…
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Behind the Smile: Art, Identity, and the Power of Telling Your Own Story
November hosts Transgender Awareness Week. This year, I wanted to honor my daughter not just as her mother, but as someone who sees her—truly sees her—and believes her. Sometimes art expresses what words alone cannot. Artist StatementThis piece is a representation of dysphoria and how it can feel like a villain, hunting you down and…
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Dear Alice
In A Hundred Ways to Say I Love You, love often shows up in small acts: a letter slipped into a suitcase, a line about laundry, a favorite song. When Alice goes away to college, both her parents put their feelings on paper—Don’s meandering and tender, Ruth’s brief but quietly fierce. Two voices, one envelope. These…
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Dear Jojo
This letter was never sent. Molly wrote it during her first semester of college, several months after Jojo’s death. She keeps it in a box with all the notes Jojo wrote her over the years—correspondence that can never be returned. More Letters from Radiant
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The Lowdown: What it’s Like to Die
This piece came to me on the drive home from my eighth night shift in a row. Sometimes Jojo won’t let me rest until I’ve listened to what he needs to say. The moments Jojo remembers here all appear in A Thousand Ways to Say I’m Sorry—but seen through the eyes of the living. This…
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Why Radiant? Why not?
People don’t plan trips to Radiant. It doesn’t even earn a bold font on a map of Virginia—if it’s marked at all. It’s the kind of place Google Maps skips over—not quite big enough to matter, not quite small enough to disappear. But folks find their way to it, detouring off the interstate to get…
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Broccoli: Resident Feline, Reluctant Mascot
Why Broccoli? Because even in a story about grief, forgiveness, and family, there’s room for a cat. Broccoli lives on the margins of the human world, but he notices everything. He’s prickly, particular, and unexpectedly tender when no one’s looking. He also has a point of view—literally. In A Hundred Ways to Say I Love…