Divorce Survivors, Second Marriage Thrivers
Ask a parent in a two-household family about where all their tupperware goes and where the cute new outfit they bought for their kid disappeared to and the number of times they’ve had to drive back to the other house to get something that a kid forgot to bring and needs desperately for school or
A Follow Up on Three F-Words in My Life: Food, Fitness, and Fasting You can’t outrun a donut. That’s what they say anyways. But that’s what I did for years. I ran for hours at a time. At that rate, you can outrun a donut. But when you can’t run that far anymore, a donut
I used to stare at a white screen and feel a thrill of what words I’d write down. By the end of a good writing session, I’d have the start of a short story, novel, or an entire blog post written. Words would pour out of me from mysterious places. I was vulnerable, sad, joyful
I caught the Arrowhead bug the first time I heard about it. The year was 2019. Arrowhead had made national news headlines because a record-setting polar vortex had overtaken the northwoods just as Arrowhead 135 athletes prepared to take the trail. International Falls, Minnesota, was the coldest place in the United States – colder even
How do we keep moving when the obstacles pile up higher than we can handle? When anxiety and despondency and exhaustion steal all of our energy? When stress cripples us? Life is a series of difficulties, one level after another. We graduate from one to the next and hopefully get stronger along the way. But
I wasn’t going to get married again. That was completely out of the picture. I was open to relationships, and I was willing to be committed on a day-to-day basis. But no more vows. No more legal ties and financial entanglements. Melinda was living with me. I loved her. But marriage was not in my
Six months after my divorce, I had to introduce myself to people I had seen all the time a year earlier. I had changed so much that they didn’t recognize me. I’d lost almost 60 pounds. I wore different clothes. I had a new haircut and corporately acceptable facial hair. Before my divorce, I had
It happened in a single day. On my way to work, the building was standing. On my way back home, the building had turned to rubble. That was the building I had dreamed about inhabiting. When I first saw it, I could hardly contain the excitement. It was the perfect location for the movement I
We’ve both had bad days. Believe me. We’ve had days where our entire realities changed before our eyes. Days where the documents were signed. Days where we didn’t know if we’d smile again. Days we didn’t know we’d be meeting each other in the future and never would have guessed we’d have a person to
This is the story of how we met. And we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for our friends. The story goes like this: FOUR YEARS AGO ON THIS DAY, Melinda found Israel. May 20th, 2015. It’s an important day, to say the least. Melinda moved to the Midwest in March of 2015. She moved
Israel and Melinda 