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Last month, in a fit of despair, I emailed my minister and some other leaders at our church and said LET’S DO SOMETHING! Let’s...
The post This Is What Love and Compassion Looks Like appeared first on Christine Organ.
The holidays can be a tricky time for parents. On top of the pressure to give my kids the childhood memories of pine-scented trees...
The post The Day My Son Learned What Generosity Looks Like appeared first on Christine Organ.
Say what you will about 2016, but one thing’s for sure: it has not been boring. In fact, it’s been a whirlwind of emotions,...
The post NEW BOOK! Here In The Middle: Stories of Love, Loss, and Connection From the Ones Sandwiched In Between appeared first on Christine Organ.
Ahhh…SEPTEMBER. I have been writing a post in my head for the past several weeks titled The Fresh Start of September or something like...
The post The False Hope of Fall appeared first on Christine Organ.
A couple weeks ago, I was stopped because I didn’t use a turn signal. The officer took my license, checked to make sure the...
The post With Great Privilege Comes Great Responsibility appeared first on Christine Organ.
In a few weeks, I will turn another year older. It isn’t a milestone birthday, which means it is generally one of those...
The post Thirty-Something appeared first on Christine Organ.
I heard the news about Orlando in bits and pieces yesterday morning. A headline on Facebook. A talking head on the television. A...
The post I Don’t Need to Understand appeared first on Christine Organ.
They say the road to perfection is paved with mistakes and bad decisions. Or something like that. In any event, I make lots of...
The post I Just Want to Be Perfect, and a Series of Mistakes and Bad Decisions appeared first on Christine Organ.
I cried this morning. I cried for no reason and for all the reasons. Sometimes that happens. I had been reading through this essay that I...
The post Not All We Want But More Than Enough appeared first on Christine Organ.
When I first started this website four years ago, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Truthfully, I’m not sure that I’m...
The post A Foggy Street or a Sandy Island appeared first on Christine Organ.
Last fall while I was out for a walk, I passed a young mom on the street. When I first saw her from a...
The post How Are You Really? appeared first on Christine Organ.
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I...
The post Fast But Great appeared first on Christine Organ.
I went swimming this morning. This might not sound like that big of a deal, but up until two weeks ago I hadn’t been...
The post Jumping Back In appeared first on Christine Organ.
Little did I know, four years ago, when I sat in my friend Angie’s kitchen, this is what would happen. As I sat on...
The post An Electric Buzz appeared first on Christine Organ.
The phone rang in our motel room around 9 a.m., startling us all. In 1987, motel room phones only rang if it was a...
The post The Only Thing That Matters appeared first on Christine Organ.
After my oldest son was born, I found it nearly impossible to leave the house. We lived in the city without on-site parking so...
The post The Cheerleaders on the Side of the Road appeared first on Christine Organ.
January has been a long slog of a month. If there is one word that comes to mind when I think of the past...
The post Onward appeared first on Christine Organ.
A few years ago, I wrote an essay about smashing windows. Not actual windows. But the figurative windows that distort the ways that I...
The post Fumbling Around Together appeared first on Christine Organ.
“What am I doing?” I stand in the middle of the kitchen and ask this question aloud, even though there is no one...
The post In Defense of Wandering appeared first on Christine Organ.
Author’s Note: I have had a version of this post – originally an essay – on my computer for weeks. While I worked to...
The post Dear Friend… appeared first on Christine Organ.
We’re moving into the season of the two G’s — gratitude and giving — and I recently read two articles that, separately, talked about...
The post Gratitude, Giving, and a Giveaway appeared first on Christine Organ.
I am not an overly sentimental person. Emotional? Yes. Dramatic. You bet. But sentimental? Not particularly. I didn’t keep a pregnancy journal. I don’t...
The post A Mosaic of Shared Memories: The Story of a Well-Loved Crib appeared first on Christine Organ.
I have a list of parenting regrets about a mile long. Wasting money on an expensive rocking chair and signing my three-year-old up for...
The post Why I Don’t Regret Taking All Those Baby Photos appeared first on Christine Organ.
I have never been to Paris. Well, unless you count that one really stressful layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport last summer. Which I...
The post more love appeared first on Christine Organ.
Author’s Note: This essay was written more than a year ago, the situation described happened over two years ago, and since then the scars...
The post Waiting for the Scars to Fade appeared first on Christine Organ.
If there is one piece of advice that I have heard more than any others, it is this: Develop a thick skin. I’ve heard...
The post A Thick Skin? No thank you. appeared first on Christine Organ.
Soak it up, the radio DJ told me yesterday afternoon while I drove home after dropping Teddy off at school. The weather was warm and...
The post The Problem with Soaking It Up appeared first on Christine Organ.
Every day, it becomes a little bit clearer just how little I know – as a parent, as a writer, as a woman. Just...
The post I Know This Much Is True appeared first on Christine Organ.
My grandparents raised their family in a tiny, brick bungalow on the west side of Milwaukee. The size of the house was inversely proportionate...
The post Baseball, Crossword Puzzles, and an AM/FM Radio appeared first on Christine Organ.
Fairly early on in our marriage, my husband and I made the mutual decision – the merits of which I am not looking...
The post Balance Is Bullsh*t appeared first on Christine Organ.
“Tonight’s the night the world begins again” — Lyrics to “Better Days” by Goo Goo Dolls As they say, everything old will be new...
The post Changing the Lyrics appeared first on Christine Organ.
A couple days ago, while I was at the gym elliptically my way to nowhere, I read this post right here. It is big...
The post Listening to the Little Girl with a Potty Mouth appeared first on Christine Organ.
It seems that the sky is, in fact, falling. Well, not necessarily the sky, but the ceiling. To be specific, the ceiling in our...
The post When the Sky Is Falling (or feels like it) appeared first on Christine Organ.
“People who don’t stay down after they fall or are tripped are often trouble makers. Hard to control. Which is the best kind of...
The post Grit and Grace appeared first on Christine Organ.
“Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad.” — “As Good As...
The post Sometimes It’s All So Hard. Sometimes It’s Not. appeared first on Christine Organ.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but it happened. Was it sometime this summer? Or did it happen before then, maybe last fall?...
The post The In-Between Years appeared first on Christine Organ.
In September. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past three months. When will I clean out the over-flowing dresser drawers? In September....
The post Starting Again appeared first on Christine Organ.
Don’t worry; this isn’t going to be one of those letters. You know the kind. Some well-intentioned and wise adult writes with a just-trying-to-be-helpful...
The post To the Teenage Girls at the Swimming Pool appeared first on Christine Organ.
As a writer, most of my work is done alone. It is just me, my computer, the wild horses running through my head, and...
The post I Am, We Are appeared first on Christine Organ.
“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to...
The post Scuba Diving, Heaviness, and My People appeared first on Christine Organ.
We hear so much lately about all the Internet trolls and nastiness on the web these days, but what we don’t acknowledge enough are...
The post Questions, Answers, and Friendship on the Internet appeared first on Christine Organ.
I stand at the podium, sweaty hands clinging to my notes. My right knee shakes a little. I shift my weight and it stops....
The post Not in a Million Years appeared first on Christine Organ.
“Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart longs for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is...
The post Have (No) Fear appeared first on Christine Organ.
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one” — John Lennon, lyrics to Imagine I’ve been quieter here, in this...
The post Only One appeared first on Christine Organ.
Note: This post was in response to a question posed by the TODAY Parenting Team, in which they asked members to share their summer...
The post The Expectation-Free Summer appeared first on Christine Organ.
It’s summer – which means kids home from school, trips up to Wisconsin, last minute playdates, visits to the local public pool, and not...
The post Friday Summer Fun: 10 Things You Might Not Know About Me appeared first on Christine Organ.
The last thing I need is another holiday with its overinflated expectations and endless chores. So when Jackson suggested a new family holiday –...
The post Giving Day and Holidays Gone Awry appeared first on Christine Organ.
I don’t write about my husband much. Today is an exception. Matt and I met nearly 16 years ago on a hot and muggy...
The post On Growing Up, Growing Old, and Being Stupid Together appeared first on Christine Organ.
When I first moved to Chicago 13 years ago, one of the things that intimated me most was the CTA train system, commonly known...
The post On the Third Rail, Crying in Church, and the Next Good Thing appeared first on Christine Organ.
Though the weather here in the Midwest indicates otherwise, we are firmly entrenched in Spring. It is now mid-May. Or maybe even late-May depending...
The post Sticky Taffy appeared first on Christine Organ.
Let me just start by stating the obvious: I miss you. We’ve been friends for 20, maybe 30 years, and although we have...
The post A Letter to Back-In-The-Day Friends appeared first on Christine Organ.
Last night, Teddy announced that he had made me a really awesome card for Valentine’s Day. “At school,” he clarified. “I made a really...
The post For the Ones In the Muddy Trenches on Mother’s Day appeared first on Christine Organ.
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting....
The post Kayaks and Wild Geese appeared first on Christine Organ.
When I was nine years old, my grandpa was in a plane crash. While this event has been woven into the fabric of our family’s...
The post Questions Without Answers appeared first on Christine Organ.
“How to write: Butt in chair. Start each day anywhere. Let yourself do it badly. Just take one passage at a time. Get butt...
The post How to Do Just About Anything appeared first on Christine Organ.
We all know that Monday mornings are hard. Mondays are about gritting our teeth and showing up. But you know what comes in a...
The post Thursday Nights, Chocolate Milk, and Crumpled Love Letters appeared first on Christine Organ.
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To...
The post Movement or Stillness, Destruction or Growth? appeared first on Christine Organ.
“I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get...
The post On Comparisons, Windows, and Distorted Reflections appeared first on Christine Organ.
Sometimes you need a good, long cry in the car. The past few days have been hard. Really hard. That isn’t easy to write,...
The post On Hard Days, Staying Soft, and Walking Toward the Water appeared first on Christine Organ.
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