Today’s project: replacing the old quarter-round pulls on a vintage dresser I just bought, with some gold ones I found on Amazon. (Swipe to see the “before.”) One of these days I will get around to putting trim around that door. 😬 **Details on the pulls and art in my
I wrote a piece for the @washingtonpost about giving our kids hope in the midst of a season of losses.
“We can give our kids one of two perspectives. That of victimhood: that they’ve lost things they’re entitled to, that they should remain outraged, and that they will be forever scarred by their current losses. Or that of empowerment: narratives of delayed gratification, of resiliency, of grieving and moving on, and of finding new meaning and new coping skills.
We don’t need to suppress our kids’ natural responses to what they are losing right now. We need to acknowledge and work through their real feelings, and give them permission to feel fear, doubt, rage, and sadness, just as we do.
We also need to give our kids hope. We need to help them see this as a temporary season, to give them some sense that their world, while being profoundly changed, will not be forever marred. In a society steeped in privilege and prosperity gospel, we’ve been taught to run from suffering at all costs. But if we’ve lived long enough, we also know that suffering and disappointment are inevitable. In my own life, I’ve experienced great losses, and I have learned that challenge and adversity can be a catalyst for resilience. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still grieve those losses, but I can see how the periods of life where things did not go as I expected, even in devastating ways, taught me to be more flexible, to let go of trying to control outcomes, and to learn to brush myself off and find a new plan when mine wasn’t panning out.
We now have the opportunity to coach our children through a season of disappointment. And while it’s decidedly difficult, it’s also an incredible opportunity while they’re still in our care to teach them how to weather the future storms that life will bring.”
Read the rest here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/08/20/this-is-our-season-coaching-our-children-through-disappointment/ Less
This picture was taken about five minutes before a hairy accident that sent India flying over a steep embankment on her mountain bike. We decided that on our last day in Park City, we would rent some bikes and ride down the “Easy Rider” trail at Woodward while the boys were skating. Their website said it was a trail for beginners. When I called to make the reservation I confirmed. When we paid, I confirmed. “We have NO EXPERIENCE. Is this okay for us?” Yes, I was assured. And then again while checking out bikes, I asked a third employee. “We don’t know what we are doing. This is okay, right?” “Only way to find out is to try,” we were told. So we took the ski lift up and following the green dots for the Easy Rider trail, only to find that this trail was in no way appropriate for beginners. You can swipe left to see the photo of the happy lady casually riding down a relatively flat trail from their website. And then swipe again to see a better representation of the trail we were on. It was INSANE. We got past one particularly difficult sent of steep hills and turns and thought we’d seen the worst of it, but then a few feet up, there was a huge hill followed by two incredibly steep berms with sharp turns. I was going first, and made it but knew it was bad, and turned to yell caution to India only to watch her fly over the edge of the embankment, head-first. Luckily Mark was with us, and we pulled her up. She was protected by her helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads, thankfully, but her pants were ripped to shreds and her stomach and legs were cut up pretty badly. We ended up having to call their medic team to get us down. I sat with India for about five minutes waiting for them to show up, helping her to calm down and cover up where her pants had been ripped off. And then I stood up . . . and realized that I’d injured myself pretty badly too. I hadn’t noticed in the adrenaline of helping India but I’d had to basically wreck my own bike in order to stop and help her because it happened at the top of a series of hills and turns (not a place I could just gracefully brake and stop), and my back was hurt so badly I could barely walk. (Con’t)
