by Ashley Larkin | Jul 30, 2014 | Joy, Risk-taking, Surrender, Trust
I mix a splash of spruce green acrylic paint with the chartreuse, let my paintbrush pick up and lay down the two colors unevenly. I do not know what will appear before me when I do. I hold one of the raw wooden-handled brushes that sit in the jar on the shelf between...
by Ashley Larkin | Jul 15, 2014 | Fear, One Word: Seek, Risk-taking, Trust, Truth-telling
Everywhere I look and in every word I read, I hear, Brave. Brave. Be brave. _____ We welcome in this dear girl, knocked around and emotionally roughed up by peers this school year, and she brings her self, an intact smile and quirky sense of humor as if she is not...
by Ashley Larkin | Sep 9, 2013 | Childhood, Faith, Family, Favorite posts, Fear, Perspective, Surrender
My mother helped make me an artist because she taught me to see as one struck by wonder. Through her eyes, I first treasured thistle’s down and oak’s curved limb, leaf’s shadow and bird’s wing, the shapes of clouds and the kind of smiles made only with eyes. My mother...
by Ashley Larkin | Jan 10, 2013 | Family, Mothering, One Word: Trust, Open endings, Parenting, Perspective, Trust
This week, the girls and I learned about spiders. How they toil. How they spin. How six different substances are released from the backside of their bodies to make up the components needed for their completed webs. (What?! How do they store all that...
by Ashley Larkin | Jun 5, 2012 | Childhood, Gratitude, Joy, Just Write, Mothering
Summer vacation is coming, and I want to make room for it in this crowded basement, leave space on those shelves for the girls to see possibilities and breathe art and science projects to life. I want to be excited for all the things they will imagine and want to make...
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