elevate the everyday

It’s here! So excited to finally share this beautiful book project from Tracey Clark with you!

In her new book Elevate the Everyday: A Photographic Guide to Picturing Motherhood, Tracey manages to combine her years of photography expertise with amazing and practical tips for capturing the journey of motherhood. The book is not only gorgeous, helpful, and insanely inspiring, but it’s also full of several must-read stories of motherhood — her own and those of many of the mom writers and bloggers you know and love. I am beyond honored to have my own story included in the book.

Take a look!

Beautiful, right?

And yippeee! Here’s my story:

road to graeagle

this is the road to graeagle, where we went last week. pretty california.

this week has felt like a a big fat series of parenting fails. my inclination during such fails, after i cry and ruthlessly blame myself, is to a) run away with my family and live off the land (but then i remember i can’t even keep a geranium alive, let alone grow food, build shelter, or live without the internet), b) run away alone (but then i remember i love them all so), or c) drink until i forget my woes (but then i remember i haven’t done that in over a decade now; it’s not an option).

sigh. so i must deal. sit with it. try to learn something. do the things in my power to find solutions. try not to be so hard on my kids. on myself. on society. on the world. and try not to worry or, you know, focus on ALL THAT IMPENDING DOOM (in my head).

so that’s what i’m working on. you?

life + fiber

ate quinoa for the first two meals of the day. yes, by choice. trying to eat more fiber and well, it’s kinda good. i take that back. the breakfast version (with vanilla soymilk, candied walnuts, and white peaches) was frickin’ awful. tasted like dirt — and not in a good dirt way — so i mostly just ate the peaches and nuts out of it. however, the lunch version (with black beans, a bit of chicken, cheddar, salsa and scooped up with tortilla chips) was awesome. how do you eat your quinoa?

new hue

is there anything better than a day when your eyes open up to something new? no, not to a destination where you’ve never been but, instead, to that inside place you’ve always known. after carrying it around all these years, you thought you had it tapped. you’ve held it up and inspected it from all sides, in the the light of every hour of every kind of day, and surely you had it all figured out: its arithmetic, its punctuation, its hues within the color wheel.

but then, just like that that … that old familiar thing gets flipped, and suddenly it’s not at all the shameful, scary thing you thought it was. in fact, it’s totally brand new.

and then holy hell, so are you.