A prescription for a solo break for the exhausted caregiver For a couple weeks, I’ve been peppered with gentle friends offering hugs and asking what they can do to help. I am not sure what to say. My father passed away at the end of June following a fight —…

On death and loss, a personal and political reflection — Life is perilous. I write this on the morning of my father’s death, what would have been his 80th birthday. Is his birthday? Was his birthday? I’m not sure what tense to use here. I’d had plans to write about the overwhelm of being an American these past few weeks…

Unpacking the baggage from my family home — “One day, all this will be yours.” It was a promise my mother made years ago, wanting to assure me that I’d have some sort of inheritance. I scoffed. All I’d ever wanted was to escape my childhood home. I also knew better. I knew how little they had saved…

The Dobbs ruling is a culmination, and just the beginning — At the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting last week, church messengers (delegates) attended sessions that rolled out a strategic response to the looming end of Roe. Life begins at conception, most seemed to agree, and so steps must be taken to protect the “pre-born.” Those steps, as outlined…

The charge of sharing space with other reporters — I spent last week three time zones away from home, staying up way too late working, waking up too early (jet lag), and living on tacos and pizza like a college kid. Not only did it become evident that I fail at self-care without the obligation to tend to my…

A worldview that bestows men authority and headship also enabled abuse and coverup — A pastor, later convicted of sex crimes against two minors, had been described as merely a “woman squeezer.” As sexual abuse survivors came forward, they were attacked openly by church leaders and within internal emails, called: “Whore.” Adulteress. Bitter, jealous woman. Such response to allegations of sexual abuse and personal…

There’s no good way to tell children about another school shooting or much reason to believe our policymakers will help prevent the next one — This year will mark the decade anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting. I remember because my daughter turned ten this year, and she was a baby in her stroller with me when I rolled up to a protest in Washington, D.C. in the days after the unbearable tragedy…

The anxious rhythms of end of life care — For months I’d been begging staff at my parents’ nursing home to help me get a cognitive assessment for both. I needed a word — is dementia appropriate? — for the drift I saw in my mom, my father’s conversational loops. Once I got them settled in at a nursing…

Old evangelical media offers a primer for the attack on Roe — In 2007, the now-defunct San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival awarded Best of Festival to a documentary called The Monstrous Regiment of Women, a film that simultaneously asserted that women leading families or nations is antithetical to the Bible, vilified feminists (as Marxists and destroyers of the home), and called…