leaves with brown spots

How To Be Present In Your Daughter’s Life

What’s brown and green and not looking right all over? That’s what I asked myself as I recently looked at my plant. And that’s what I also asked myself as I looked at what my daughter was displaying. No mom ever expects her plant — or her daughter — to start displaying “brown spots.” And even […]
team hands

To Practice Or Not To Practice…With The Team

When the leaves changed in October 2018, so did my approach with my eldest daughter regarding team practice. I’d been upstairs doing some work and I heard the door open in the front of the house. Both of my daughters came home through the door. I was only expecting one of them—my youngest, Jasmine—to be […]
girl football player

Motherhood and Madden Football: Lessons Learned

  Motherhood and Madden Football are more than Xs and Os. Madden football taught me four important lessons about how to mother my daughters–and it’s not just hugs and kisses.   Lesson #1: Decisions. Decisions. I had to decide on my storage capacity. Upgrading my smartphone allowed me to increase the amount of storage space […]
bird beak tied up

Top 3 Lessons Learned: Why “LadyBird” Couldn’t Sing.

  Last night, I saw the movie LadyBird. It’s a poignant film about the relationship between a critical mother and a vocal daughter (“LadyBird”) during the daughter’s senior year of high school. Their outwardly volatile and contentious mother-daughter relationship is only depicted on-screen three times in the: car daughter’s bedroom kitchen. The rest of the […]
father daughter bond smiling at each other

The Father Daughter Bond

The father-daughter bond is often overshadowed by the mother-daughter relationship. Why? Because, after a mom gives birth, the child is immediately given to the mother for the initial bonding to take place. All the skin-to-skin contact, the placing of a daughter on the chest/heart of her mom, and the mutual cooing facilitate the bond. This […]
mom remembering_with baby_figurine

Do You Remember? A Mom’s Graduation Reflections

  Do you remember the first time you held your newborn daughter? I do. I remember being so tired. I also remember being so aware of her size when a nurse brought one of my twin daughters to me. My baby girl, Jasmine, was so long. And she was crying. I must have had a […]