Midwest Mimi

  • I Am Practicing the Life I Want Before I Can Afford It

    I did not know it was abundance. I thought it was dinner. Homemade bread, canned pears, fresh tomatoes, animals, woods, pasture, and food that came from the work of our own hands. I do not have the land yet, but I can still practice the skills, rhythms, and values of the life I am building…

  • I Am Learning to Build Without Burning Myself Down

    The old me knew how to hustle, but hustle taught me to measure everything by immediate payout. Now I am learning a different kind of discipline: building a life my body can sustain. One that makes room for chronic illness, family, rest, creative purpose, and the stubborn return to the work that still matters.

  • He Sounded Like Home, Even When Home Was Chaos

    When people say they love Jelly Roll, I know what they mean. But when I say it, I mean something different. I mean his music found me when I was still in the middle of my hustle years, back when survival felt like adrenaline and invincibility. This is not just about fandom. It is about…

  • The Bandwidth of Peace

    A rainy spring morning, a numb hand, an unfinished book-tree drawing, and a list of ā€œanalog hobbiesā€ got me thinking about disability, creativity, and accommodations. There is no prize for making the process harder. The prize is the peace we feel while making something.

  • Building in the Margins

    Some weeks disappear into therapy appointments, paperwork, specialist visits, and whatever decides to break while I am trying to keep up. This is what progress looks like in a high-needs household when you are building a better future in scraps of time and leftover energy.

  • When Thereā€™s No Cushion Left

    When you live with no cushion left, one small problem never stays small. A power outage, a broken washer, a missed deposit, and an empty tank can turn an ordinary day into something much heavier.

  • Taking Out the Trash

    We threw out what we didnā€™t need when we moved. Not just things. People too. It wasnā€™t dramatic or loud. Just a quiet decision to stop carrying what was making our life heavier, and start building something more peaceful for our family.

  • I Havenā€™t Had a Good Day in a While

    I havenā€™t had a good day in a while. Not because I stopped trying, but because my body hasnā€™t caught up. This is what it looks like to keep showing up when even small things hurt.

  • Why I Still Call Him Father

    My abuser went to church. For years I wrestled with what that meant about God. This is the story of why I still call Him Father, and how protecting my children became the clearest expression of my faith.

  • The Survivable Option

    When you are poor, calling for help is never just about help. It is about what follows. In a crisis, parenting becomes a calculation between different kinds of risk. This is the story of the day I chose what looked indefensible from the outside and necessary from the inside.

  • The Life Iā€™m Writing Into Existence

    I donā€™t have the money to build the life I want yetā€¦ so Iā€™m writing it first. This is the story of how Iā€™m creating a safer, slower, more intentional life for my familyā€”starting with imagination and turning it into something real.

  • Grief That Grows

    Healing did not mean letting my mother go. It meant learning how to keep loving her in a way that did not cost me my own lifeā€”and allowing grief to change shape into something quieter, steadier, and still full of love.

  • Grief That Grows

    After my mother died, my family did not grieve in the same way. My dad withdrew, my brother went quiet, and I had to learn that different expressions of grief do not mean abandonmentā€”but they do change how we love each other.

  • Grief That Grows

    After eight years of anticipatory grief and the loss of my mother to early onset Alzheimerā€™s, I learned that grief doesnā€™t just take who you loveā€”it takes the shape of the world you built around them.

  • No Neat Justice

    When powerful men are accused, the internet debates. The women who survived are not debating. Their bodies are remembering. I do not control federal prosecutions. But I control my boundaries. Hope does not live in headlines. It lives in what we enforce in our own lives.