Yesterday I ate my first one this year of those fruits in the photo. In Haiti we call them mandarines , but in our house we call them mika...

  So many people in Haiti are in captivity right now, held by kidnappers. Years ago, a friend who had cancer told me to be thankful every ti...

  You stood beside me Promised to be there always: Love, here you still are Birdtober? Gratiku? What's up with me and these made-up word...

  Pillows and podcasts Rest from all there is to do Saturday morning Birdtober? Gratiku? What's up with me and these made-up words and ...

I'm hosting Poetry Friday this week, the week of Thanksgiving! Leave your links in the comments and I will round them up, old-school sty...

  "Don't you want to thank someone for this?" asks Andrew Peterson in his song (see the video below). Yes, I do want to thank ...

  Yesterday I wrote about listening, and how thankful I am for it. Today I'm thinking about not listening, about those times when you cl...

  Yesterday I listened to this Ted Talk by Hrishikesh Hirway in which he talks about listening and gives some ways to do it better. He also...

  I've been teaching all or almost all middle schoolers for about fifteen years now. I love this age, the way they are still little kids...

Who knows what makes healing happen? Sure, it's the surgery, and the medicine, and the therapy. It's the determination of the patien...

  Today I'm thankful for this cheerful and active little bird, bouncing around my yard. I already wrote about this species some here , a...

  Today I am thankful for my children, for the chance to be a mother, and for all those years they spent in my home. What a privilege it was...

  Today I am thankful for the sun. So far, nobody has been able to block Haiti from receiving that. It makes me happy, and it also brings po...

  Today I got my monthly Vitamin B12 shot (you can read more about that here ), a bit delayed by all the chaos lately. I am so thankful that...

  Today parents had the option of sending their kids in person or having them Zoom in from home. There were just a few in my classroom, but ...

  Someone I love has been in the ICU, and is finally communicating with me again. I'm thankful! Many days’ silence Ends with these three...

  I spent yesterday going through piles of things that I have saved through the years, precious things like notes from my kids (apparently e...

  We moved into this house in November 2001. Twenty years of memories, the good and the bad, the childhood of our two kids. I'm thankful...

Last Friday's Gratiku was about how morning comes, with its rituals, in spite of all the challenges that we've been fretting about ...

    Today and every day I am thankful for the friends and family who keep checking in, who pray for us, who send me articles (even if they a...