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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…
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The Summer of Reality
This story was part of the collection of writing samples I submitted for the Creative Writing Scholarship contest at Arkansas Tech University in Spring 1999. I placed 4th, so I was pretty excited about that. The scholarship paid for my books for my first year in college. The Summer of Reality, 1999 The last day that I was ever fifteen, I went to the mall with my Mom, my aunt Carrie, and my best friend Melanie. Earlier that morning, I mailed a letter that could change my whole life if the receiver decided to at least humor me. During the previous school year, I had developed a crush on a new boy…
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My love history and why I never wrote about my husband until now
Let me warn you: This post is long. Something my husband and I talked about before he helped me launch this website was the fact that I wrote a lot of material about someone I loved before I met him. I was worried that what I wrote a long time ago would hurt my husband, something I would never do intentionally. Now my husband, Jonathan, is very blunt, as anyone who knows him will tell you. He told me specifically that he is not threatened by my past because it made me who I am—the woman he loves. We talked about my past and his while we were getting to know each…
