Essays

  • Woman apologizing
    Essays,  General Thoughts

    Apologies and hurt feelings

    If you’re reading this post, you’re a human being who’s been hurt before. It’s part of life. Also, it’s guaranteed that you’ve hurt someone else, whether intentionally or not. The worst part of hurting someone is when you do so unintentionally…and they won’t or can’t accept your sincere apology for the miscommunication. That happened to me recently. I lost some people I cared about because I hurt them with my blog post about my unexpected employment changes. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I was and still am extremely hurt by the whole situation that resulted in my job loss, so I tried to write only facts without…

  • Essays,  General Thoughts

    Unexpected Employment Changes

    Note: Edited on August 20, 2021, in order to clarify some points that I did not communicate clearly in the first publication which caused some hurt feelings with some former coworkers. That was never my intent because I care for those people very much and would never intentionally hurt anyone. People who know me well know my heart. Growing up, I knew that my parents were careful with their money. They worked hard for what they had, and when each of them faced a job loss, they took it in stride and found something else to support our family. It’s what good parents do—they provide for their children. It’s what…

  • Essays,  General Thoughts

    A New Family Member: An official introduction

    As many of you know, we lost Buddy, a dear four-legged and furry member of our family back in September 2020. By December, we were feeling the pull to adopt another dog. After three months of mourning had passed, I wouldn’t say we were healed; we were just open to expanding our hearts again. After some searching and conversations with our kids, Jonathan and I reached out to Needy Paws Animal Shelter in Clarksville, Arkansas. It was there we became interested in a young adult Kelpie mix named Roscoe, whom we adopted on December 30. I mentioned him in my first post of 2021, but here’s some more information about…