Blog
12/10/2025: This Character Has My Flaw! Today marked the release of Percy Jackson season 2. As an avid Percy Jackson fan, I was excited! After watching the first two episodes I still am! One thing that attracted me, as well as a lot of kids, to the books was the open honesty with which the characters spoke about their learning disabilities. Percy, like most demigods, has both ADHD and Dyslexia. While a lot of children’s media seeks to speak to the positives, Rick Riordan did a wonderful job making them positive attributes while also not shying away from speaking to the struggles they can cause in traditional learning environments. As someone with ADHD it’s refreshing to see the negatives. I think we get really caught up in teaching kids to have a positive attitude that we forget to validate the struggles they’re dealing with. Yes, things like ADHD and Dyslexia can have many benefits! But letting kids feel safe to speak about the negative experiences they’re having helps build their confidence in themselves. Knowing that they’re supported in working through negative feelings can have all the difference in the world.
12/03/2025: The Monsters My Son Makes My son has become obsessed with drawing monsters. It started a while ago when he was showing hesitation with drawing himself, instead opting for me to draw whatever it was he had in mind. We would sit together while he dictated animal after animal, bringing me toys if he thought I needed a reference, giggling happily when I was done. Then one day something changed. “Mom,” he told me, “Draw a monster.” I explained that I wasn’t sure how to draw what he was thinking because monsters can look so many different ways. He tried first to tell me what it’s head would look like, it’s body, it’s legs. I handed him the pencil and asked if he could draw one for me so that I would know what he had in mind. That’s when it started. Now he has notebooks filled with monsters. Great sweeping things with wings. Tiny silly things with hair. Two heads, four heads, more tails than eyes, more eyes than teeth. His homework, his tests, his paper cups. Everything covered in creatures you’ve never seen. Watching him find joy in drawing I realized the moment that flipped the switch wasn’t the monsters themselves, but the freedom he feels knowing that there’s no right or wrong way to draw them. Each one can be different, each one can be odd, each one is a monster. Adults sometimes lose that joy. The true freedom that comes from knowing there’s no right or wrong in creativity. Just silly little creatures, tucked into corners of pages, sprung from your mind to make you smile.
11/26/2025: Seeing Magic Everywhere My first imaginary friend was a tiger who would come through my window at night to whisk me away on fabulous adventures. The first story I wrote was about a fairy who lived in my ceiling fan. When I was young, I was lucky enough to read The Borrowers by Mary Norton. It started a life-long love affair with the idea that maybe magic was closer than we think. When I started seriously writing stories as an adult I wanted to capture that same feeling I had as a kid. That feeling that maybe if I sat still long enough, and looked closely enough, I would see something wonderful.
11/19/2025: Does Your Fear Look Like the Worst Version of You, Or Is That Just Me? Sometimes I think fear is a gas. It fills whatever container it’s in. I was recently let go. Laid off. Fired. Whatever you want to call it, it means the same thing, “You are not good enough.” I wrote a diary entry the day it happened bright-eyed about how I could use the down time to write. I told myself to keep applying for jobs everyday and write in between applications. That hasn’t happened. One of the classes I’m taking this semester had me creating this website as an assignment. Putting my name down with “Author” underneath it didn’t help with the fear. The fear I felt before being fired felt manageable because I had so much else going on. After, it’s taken over the space where a job used to be. “You are not good enough.” I had the confirmation in front of me. I’m not good enough. Not good enough for a job I didn’t really love. Not good enough for work that didn’t inspire me. Not good enough for a workplace that drained me. If I can’t even do something I don’t like, how can I claim I’m good enough to do something I want? The girls I want to write about have lived with me, some of them, for years. They invade my subconscious during the day and shape my dreams at night. I don’t want to let them down by failing their stories. My old boss didn’t trust my ability to write an email by myself. How can I trust myself to do them justice? As a writer I think fear is expected. The desire to do a good job. The worry that you won’t. I want to think the difference between like and love is whether you let go when faced with fear or hold on tighter. Whether you run away to something that feels safer or look it in the face until you see it for what it really is. “You are not good enough.” Plenty of people will think that about you. Plenty of people will say no. It won’t sink into your being unless you believe it too. I don’t yet know if I’m good enough to tell the stories I want to tell, but I know I want to be. So I will pull the fear in close, strap it in the passenger seat, and say: “Come on, we’ve got a lot to do.”