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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.
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Love Has to Keep Learning
Love cannot be built on the emotional weather of the moment. It has to be tended. Real love allows a person to grow, keeps asking who they are now, and chooses again and again to learn how to love them there.
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What the Calendar Couldn’t Hold
June was full of appointments, reschedules, travel, surgery recovery, and work. I needed the calendar, the reminders, and the map. But the best parts of the month happened in the margins: porch conversations, toddler hugs, family dinners, chalk on the sidewalk, and ordinary beauty I almost missed.
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I Am the Calendar, the Case Manager, and the Backup Plan
Caregiving is not just loving people. It is logistics, memory, paperwork, appointments, refills, therapies, bills, and backup plans. I am grateful I can carry the map for my family, but I am also tired from doing it inside a body that needs care too.
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Simple Living Hits Different When You Did Not Choose Less
Simple living is beautiful when it is chosen with enough security underneath it. But there is a difference between stepping away from excess and never having enough to begin with. I want a simple life, but I want it chosen, safe, and supported.
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My Kids Think School Is Out. I Know Better.
School may be out for the summer, but learning has not stopped. In our house, summer learning looks like audiobooks, gardening, chores, paid work, boredom, conflict resolution, and all the practical life skills that do not fit neatly on a worksheet.
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The Hidden Cost of Simple Things
A fall in the shower took only a few seconds, but the recovery may take days. This is the hidden cost of chronic illness: simple things are not always simple, and a slower pace does not mean a smaller dream.
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I’m Not Trying to Go Viral. I’m Trying to Build My Way Out.
I am not trying to go viral. I am trying to build my way out. A personal essay about building Midwest Mimi, Sunny Day Farm, books, art, and a future from the margins of chronic illness, poverty, motherhood, and stubborn hope.
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Parenting Again in Midlife: For the Mothers Who Thought They’d Be Done by Now
What happens when the season you thought was coming never arrives? This essay is for women who find themselves parenting again in midlife, in bodies that have already lived. A reflection on layered motherhood, chronic illness, neurodivergence, and loving deeply while grieving what has changed.
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Kids Do Well When They Can: Understanding Overwhelm Instead of Calling It Defiance
My daughter had reached her limit long before I realized it. In the truck after a long day, her tone sharpened, her words came out rude, and I felt that familiar mix of frustration and helplessness. In the moment, it looked like bad behavior. What I could not see yet was that she wasn’t being…
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Parenting Through Presence, Not Perfection: What My Kids Taught Me About Co-Regulation
There were mornings I could feel myself going offline. Not dramatic. Just done. My patience thin, my nerves shot, my thoughts moving faster than I could hold them. Sometimes I would sit on the bathroom floor just to breathe and let the moment pass. And quietly, my kids would follow. They wouldn’t ask for anything.…
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She Didn’t Sleep Through the Night for the First Three Years
My daughter didn’t sleep through the night for the first three years of her life. Not once. She needed presence, pressure, and movement to settle. There was no diagnosis yet, no language for what we were navigating, only the quiet knowing that her body did not rest the way other babies’ bodies seemed to. I…
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Letting Go of Good Mom Guilt
For a long time, being a “good mom” meant juggling everything. This is a gentle reflection on energy, limits, and what letting go of good mom guilt looked like for me.
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Midwest Mimi 