by Ashley Larkin | Sep 25, 2014 | Childhood, Love, Mothering, One Word: Seek, Open endings
Motherhood is push-pull. Hold me tight-let me go. It is I want you — and I want nothing to do with you. It is a long journey of holding close and releasing my grip. I’m experiencing it with all three of my girls right now. It’s been going on with the...
by Ashley Larkin | Sep 9, 2014 | Childhood, Family, Favorite posts, Love, Mothering, Parenting
She felt afraid. Worried she wouldn’t know enough. Missing how she used to be a baby, she said. Not ready. She felt excited. To meet friends and wear a purple backpack and practice numbers and read books with Ms. Foster. So ready. The day before kindergarten...
by Ashley Larkin | Jul 8, 2014 | Childhood, Grace, Gratitude, Mothering, Poetry
I will make art whether or not I get a thing on the page and when I cannot imagine I’ll have another thing to say, because sometimes art is seeing and listening, and not fingertips producing more. I’m not just a writer when I feel like one, lines easy and...
by Ashley Larkin | Jul 3, 2014 | Childhood, Family, Risk-taking, Trust
As a girl, I studied the globe and pages of books filled with stories of people from many lands, gazed at traditional costumes on my porcelain dolls, memorizing skin tones and lace. I spoke with accents, learned to distinguish U.S. dialects and the origin of last...
by Ashley Larkin | May 15, 2014 | Childhood, Fear, Hope, Imperfect Prose, Mothering, One Word: Seek, Perspective, Tell His Story
We worry, in fact it brings tears right to the eyes this nagging feeling that these small lives don’t matter we know their small lives do with their bellies needing food and their potty accidents, their little hearts and eyes crying out, see me, and i need the...
by Ashley Larkin | Feb 7, 2014 | Celebration, Childhood, Community, Five Minute Friday, Gratitude, Joy
The snow piles on hoods of cars, front porch furniture, pots filled with dormant living things and the beginnings of crocuses. Writing tells me it’s worth it to remember these details and the way air smells different in the white, the way sounds echo like drums...
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived