It was my first day of fifth grade. I was at a new school, in a new town and alone in the sea of people in the hallway, trying to figure out where I was supposed to wait before school officially started. There must have been a confused look on my face because a girl with dark brown hair and the cool...

'Tis the season … the political season, that is. It comes in waves — every four years at least — and it brings a tension that seemingly knows no limits. I’ll admit, politics has always made me uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I have opinions. Some might even say I have strong opinions, but it take...

If you’ve spent any time on any form of social media lately, you might have noticed the “trend” that spans, I would say, the millennial generation and younger of “breaking generational curses.” This often refers to any number of things that people of those generations are trying to do different from...

If you are in the Hays County area and have school-aged children, it is likely that they spent the last week at home for spring break, much like my 6-year-old son did. Unless you work for the school district, it is also likely that this week is a bit of a struggle every year. The combination of maki...

“On a scale of 0-4, with zero being never and four being very often, how often would you say you have felt unhappy or sad in the last two weeks?” -------- It’s a question my therapist asks approximately every two months. She tracks my answers as a way to obtain a little bit of insight on how I have ...

Integrity, noun, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. -Oxford Languages -------- In laymen’s terms, integrity is often described as, “Doing the right thing, even though no one is watching.” When I think about the current election season, this word and me...

Nine days. Nine days separated my date of birth from my older cousin, Brandon’s. For as long as I can remember, it was a point of contention between us. As kids, it was always “We get to do what I want to do because I’m the older cousin.” He always got to do the best things before me; becoming a tee...

It was midday on a Saturday (the day before Mother’s Day). I was sitting in my home office, more than an hour into a video interview for the third story we would publish on a local charter school. The interview was wrapping up, I was talking about reaching out to one more source before putting the s...

“Wait, are we going to talk about this?” I asked as we drove. “Talk about what?” my husband responded. “The fact that our son’s doctor just did an autism evaluation. We weren’t even talking about autism. Where did that come from?” ——— It was July 2020. The world was shut down. My family and I were i...