Midwest Mimi

  • I Can’t Wait Until I’m Better to Start Living

    After nearly dying from respiratory failure, I knew I wanted more than simply surviving. Years later, my chronic illnesses are better managed, but I’m not cured. I’ve learned that a meaningful life doesn’t have to wait for perfect health. Sometimes living means creating art, raising my children, and finding joy in the ordinary moments my…

  • Technology Did Not Cure My Chronic Illness. It Gave Me a Life Beyond Surviving It.

    After an unexpected fall sent me back to bed, I still wrote, connected, and applied for a grant from my phone. Technology has not cured my chronic illness, but it has given me a life beyond surviving it.

  • The Worn Path

    A forgotten audiobook sent me down a rabbit hole about memory, learning, and the physical paths our brains build through repetition. It made me think about old relationships, survival habits, creativity, and the strange truth that the life we practice becomes easier to keep living.

  • What My Kids Learned From Watching Me Be Sick

    My kids have learned from watching me be sick that bodies have limits, asking for help is not failure, and families sometimes have to carry different corners of the load. My illness has cost them things, but it has also taught them that children do not need an invincible mother. They need one who loves…

  • Sometimes You Have to Miss Someone Without Chasing Them

    Sometimes missing someone does not mean you are supposed to go back. This is about the people we still love, the versions of them we remember, and learning that history does not always get the final vote.

  • When My Body Cancels the Plans

    A flare day is more than just feeling worse. It is when the systems I already use to manage chronic illness stop being enough. This is what that looks like inside a real family, and what I wish more people understood about loving someone whose body does not always cooperate.

  • This Wasn’t the Life I Planned. Midwest Mimi Is What I Made From It.

    I thought Midwest Mimi would be a blog about chronic illness, homeschooling, and nature. After 132 posts, I realized it had become something larger: a place to make meaning, find language for difficult experiences, and help readers feel seen.

  • I Tell the Story. I Make the Meaning.

    Telling my story did not erase what happened to me. It changed my relationship to it. From telling one safe person to eventually writing publicly, I learned that George could be part of my story without being its author.

  • Closure Is Not Always a Conversation

    Closure is not always a conversation, an apology, or a neat ending. Sometimes it is finally saying what you needed to say, accepting that someone you loved also failed you, and learning how to move forward without pretending the hurt did not matter.

  • I Don’t Think Everything Happens for a Reason

    People often say everything happens for a reason, but I do not believe every wound was chosen by God. I believe we live in a broken world, and that God can still meet us in the aftermath, restore what was lost, and help something good grow from what never should have happened.

  • I Still Want More

    I am happy with my life, but that does not mean I have stopped wanting more. I still want better health, more money, a home of our own, more freedom, and a bigger writing career. Contentment is not the absence of ambition. Sometimes it is simply learning to enjoy the breeze while you keep building…

  • A Small Life Is Not the Same Thing as a Meaningless One

    A life can become smaller in radius without becoming smaller in meaning. Disability, limited stamina, and money have changed the life I once imagined, but they have not taken away the people, stories, faith, beauty, and ordinary moments that make it full.

  • The Women We Become

    Becoming Rae’s mother did not mean I stopped being my mother’s daughter. Sixteen years later, as I watch my daughter become a young woman, I understand more about what my mother gave me, what I passed on, and the women we keep becoming.

  • They Call Me Strong Because They Do Not Want to Call Me Unpaid Labor

    People call mothers like me strong, but sometimes strong is simply the word used when no one wants to say unsupported, overworked, or unpaid. Family caregiving is love, but it is also labor. When systems depend on mothers to coordinate therapies, equipment, accommodations, transportation, and safety, praising our strength does not make the work disappear.…

  • Help Has a Voicemail

    I have a list on my phone that looks like it should belong to someone who works for a human services agency. Except I do not. I am the mother. Before disabled families receive help, there is another job no one talks about: finding the help. It is a full-time, unpaid, invisible job filled with…