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…

  • We Called Our Children and Told Them Not to Come Home

    When gunshots rang out near our home, we called our children and told them not to come home. Raising a family in a neighborhood affected by violence means making difficult choices, living with fear, and working toward a future where home can truly feel safe.

  • What Progress Actually Sounds Like

    My children did not lack the ability to learn. They lacked schools prepared to support them. This is what happened and what progress sounded like after we left.

  • Some Lessons Are Too Expensive to Learn the Hard Way

    Some lessons are worth learning by trial and error. Others carry consequences too serious to discover after the fact. From marriage and parenting to the race to build more powerful AI, I keep coming back to the same question: when do we know enough to put the guardrails up?

  • 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…

  • 11 Ways to Disguise School as Real Life

    Kids do not all need the same path into learning. From cooking and gardening to movies, board games, special interests, and even boredom, real life is full of ways to help children learn without making everything feel like school.

  • 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.

  • Taking God Too Seriously to Enjoy What He Made

    Legalistic religion can make us so busy watching everyone else that we miss the life right in front of us. Faith, for me, is about relationship, grace, and learning to notice God in the ordinary moments.

  • 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…

  • Being Easy to Entertain Might Be My Greatest Life Skill

    Curiosity has helped keep my world big even when chronic illness has made my life physically smaller. Books, art, research, writing, family, and even something as simple as watching my son blow the seeds from a dandelion remind me there is always more to notice, learn, and wonder about.

  • 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 Chair Theory

    What if fitting in has less to do with changing yourself and more to do with finding where you belong? The Chair Theory offers a simple way to think about friendship, self-acceptance, and learning when it is okay to find another table.

  • She Learned to Work Before the World Called It Work

    Rae learned to work before the world called it work. At twelve, she cleaned my brother’s shop office for real money, real expectations, and a little freedom of her own. I am proud of the confidence work gave her. I also grieve that money had to matter so young.

  • I Am Not Less Autistic Because I Learned How to Live

    I am not less autistic because I have learned how to manage myself. I am not less autistic because I can stay calm in a crisis, build recovery days into my life, or recognize my limits before I break down. I have just been paying attention.