I grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s as part of a Swedish-American family in a suburban home just beyond the city limits of St. Paul, Minnesota. The last sibling to arrive, I joined my older sister, two brothers and parents in a small, single-story house on a cul de sac of other starter homes built in the 1950s. In my generation, suburban homes did not necessarily equate to more space. We lived lightly crammed together, six people sharing one bathroom. But that didn’t seem particularly unusual to me when I was young. Nor did it seem odd that there
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“You gotta keep moving. Once you stop moving, you die.” My dad told me this many times in the decade before he died, although I’m not sure if this message was meant for me, to remind himself of this mantra or to tell me something about himself. Probably all three. Dad always “moved” and tried to get us kids to move, even if he didn’t always do it in the most encouraging way (meaning he yelled a lot). He didn’t always know how to teach us, but he tried to instill his passions largely through exposure and small snippets of
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I’m a “research” person. My family knows this about me. If they are reading this, they are nodding their collective heads. When I don’t understand a concept or when I want to figure out how to do something or improve the way I do it, I research. I over-research, actually. It’s how I used to approach papers in college and articles when I was a younger journalist; I would do at least twice the amount of research as necessary to complete a project, and by the time I was ready to begin my first draft, the words would just pour
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(TW: Trigger Warning) Toward the end of June, I had to remind myself again that it’s okay to be still sometimes and to not “produce.” It’s a good reminder for me in general, as it’s my nature to go after things with passion, take on too much and be rigid with my plans. But when my brain is waving a white flag after a trigger, as it was then, I find I need to silence the self-critical voice inside my head judging me for not being more productive — for not being able to focus on what I had been
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When I woke up this morning, I didn’t feel particularly inspired by the 4th of July holiday. I felt a heaviness, the weight of “just another day” in this seemingly broken country that is in the midst of skyrocketing COVID-19 infections, political instability and civil strife. How do I celebrate this messiness and pain? Then I thought of it from a different perspective, one of trauma and healing. And Potential. Yes, we are still in the middle of a societal trauma that has been costly in human life, economic loss and mental health. Setting politics aside, I think everyone can
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I think most of us in the United States can agree: The last three months have felt more like three years. My brain is exhausted, as if it’s permanently stuck in the final leg of a triathlon that won’t end, and has been shaken by events, uncertainty, fear, hope and growth. As we arrive at mid-June, COVID-19 news coverage has been sharing space with continuing Black Lives Matter protests and conversations that are starting to create a groundswell of changes and self-examination in our country. We’ve pressed the reboot button in terms of understanding how COVID-19 is going to spread this
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