WARNING: Dear Reader, I should caution you before you get yourself in too deep. This story will leave you stuck in the middle of a narrative arch. The narrative arch is what structures all our favorite stories. It guides the reader through all the pain and turmoil to set them down gently at the end […]
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How Creating Healthy Boundaries Saved My Marriage. I am going to let you in on a little secret that took me years to learn. In fact, I am still learning it. The secret is this: Marriage is not supposed to make you happy. It supposed to make you FREE. That freedom requires trust. I have […]
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How We Can Be Wrong About Our Parents. If you know my father, you know what a kind man he is. You know that he has spent his life teaching and serving others. You also know that he is genuine enough and humble enough to tell you about his mistakes. I have often heard him say, “if […]
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Do you have a kid that’s driving you crazy? My mother-in-law, Peggy, tells me that when my husband was little she used to cry herself to sleep at night. What was she to do? Her son Bruce was stubborn, feisty, prone to start fights, and known by the neighborhood mothers as a trouble maker. But seriously, […]
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My Favorite Drug Dealer. At one time, Carly was one of San Diego’s most successful drug dealers. Her body guard packed a gun and she carried wads of cash in her purse. I met her several years later when she was in prison for the third time. She was eight months pregnant and about to be […]
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The last time my sister, Kristen, saw her husband, Rob, he was on the way out the door to do a favor for a total stranger. When she asked why he was doing this, he said “I am paying it forward.” He and the stranger died in a single-engine plane crash a few hours later. That […]
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When Forgiveness Demands No Apology. In some ways, 2009 was one of our worst years and it peaked for me in the now infamous Tupperware fight. The year before we lost 25,000 dollars on a failed adoption when Carly decided to keep the baby. Then, in 2009, the economic downturn hit us hard and a real estate investment […]
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Why I Could Not Imagine Losing Baby Rachel When were the seeds of loss born? What circumstances led to such devastation upon losing a baby I had never even seen. Looking back, the trail seems to stretch across all the places I have ever been. Perhaps in was as recent as 2002, when I understood that my […]
Read MoreI hate to admit it, but painful experiences have been defining moments in my life. Who I am today has not been shaped as much by the things in my life that turned out right, but by the things that went all wrong. If I am kind and empathetic person, if you feel I understand something about you, then we […]
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January 15, 2016
Adoption, Birth, Decision Making, Faith, Friendship, Grief, Love, Rachel
A Post About Making Those Impossible Decisions. Eight years later, I still cry when I talk about it. I still ache for that baby I never held. I even dream of her. Once I woke in the night and thought she was standing there by my bed, telling me to love her still, telling me not […]
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Cindy Brewer
December 4, 2018
Adoption, Death, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grief, Rachel
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