MUSINGS ON LIFE AND WRITING WITH SARAH BUCKLEITNER
It's Wednesday night--almost 10 p.m. on Wednesday night--and I'm sitting on the couch next to a sleepy cat and a husband who's absorbed in a book. For the last few months, I've had posts for this blog scheduled out for weeks, and sometimes months, at a time. But over time, sick kids, travel, and the … Continue reading On Catching Up
Back when I worked in the animal shelter, I encountered a new concept: sometimes, when someone who frequently fostered animals in their home reached out to see if they could foster another, we'd talk about their "Capacity for Care." Meaning--did that person have the time, space and energy to properly care for an additional responsibility? … Continue reading On Capacity for Care
The ability to share so much of our lives--and to seek fulfillment and acknowledgment from another person miles away behind a screen--is a double edged sword. Whenever we're bottling up ourselves and our lives and our loved ones into an Instagram feed or a blog, we need to be very careful.
What do you want out of life? For me, the answer to this question has always been small and big at the same time. I don't want a mansion. I don't want a big, shiny car. I don't want to be president, or to walk on the moon, or even to be anyone's boss. I … Continue reading On A Small, Good Life
Being a parent is not what I expected. The word parent is so boring. So blasé. Commonplace, even. Before becoming one, I pictured ill fitting jeans, responsibility, and the exhaustion of serving up mundanity to my children day after live-long day. As far as words go, parent was the opposite of romance in my brain. It was … Continue reading On the Sweeping Emotions of Parenthood
The back of our house has big windows that face full east, so that we get a glorious view of the sunrise coming up from the trees behind our house, and then are treated to the slow progression of dull dawn light, to melty golden light that flows in our windows and sticks to the … Continue reading April
We woke to slate grey skies and helterskelter leaves flapping violently on their twigs in the trees. Jenna and I had been having a celebratory post-MCAT sleep over (complete with sticky buns, Oreos, Tarzan, and the Office) and as she rolled over to check her phone, her eyes got wide. "There's a tornado warning!" she … Continue reading On the business of survival
I'm not a very independent person. Ever since I was little, I remember feeling anxious when my parents dropped me off alone somewhere--whether it was at the barn for my weekly riding lesson, or at a friend's house. Little things gave me butterflies: ordering food at a restaurant, knocking on doors (even when the occupants … Continue reading On Independence
(Whoops! It's April and I still haven't published this. I have a very bad habit of writing things and then squirreling them away forever, never to see the light of day. Trying to break that habit: here's March's post!) March, the month of damp earth and soft air, has arrived. As temperatures have warmed, my … Continue reading March
We're in the throes of the rainy season here in the southeast. I'd never realized how many different types of rain there were: fine-misted droplets that float in the air, fat, frigid droplets that soak you clean through in minutes, full-on sluices that seem to fall from the sky in an unbroken stream. But this … Continue reading On Confidence
Feathery Thoughts 