Into the Arms of An Older Man

D. certainly threw me for a loop–both when he appeared and when he unceremoniously left (and then, of course, began doing the very same thing to another woman while lying to me about it, but that’s another story). Despite the short time we’d known each other, his leaving without any acknowledgement or offer of closure hit me harder than perhaps any other dating snafu since my early twenties. I had stopped eating, started drinking, and was pretty much a mess overall.

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Charting My Own Waters

Perhaps that’s why it hurt so
When you left.
You had become
My guiding light
The bookends of my days
My Compass.

Ever the captain,
I resumed my rightful
Place at the helm
Readjusted the sails
And set course for
A paradise of my own making.

–Sarah Clinton

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You Always Leave Like Rain

The rain lashed at my window
Like your words at my heart.
Cutting, biting,
Colder than I expected.

Little did you know
This was preferable
To the Silent void left
As you faded day by day.

–Sarah Clinton

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My Parents’ Letters

My parents met in college in the early 1980s. Smitten, they were soon engaged and then married when my mother was 19 and my father was 22. For the last semester of his pastoral program, Dad had to do missionary work in France; my mother, however, remained in Nashville. This was of course before the internet, and long-distance calls certainly weren't cheap.

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Self-confidence Sunday #11

Maybe things don't need to be easy. Maybe I needed him to come into my life, make me happy, make me hope and dream and love and plan...and then leave me, making me feel so out of control that I am desperate to make needed changes to my life. Maybe someday, I will thank him for this.

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Munchkins, You Are My “Why”

In response to the Daily Post’s  Reason to Believe : “At the end of every hard-earned day / people find some reason to believe.” What’s your reason to believe?

When I think back on some of the hardest times I’ve ever experienced, sometimes I’m not even sure I quite remember how I made it through. What I do know is that I have clung to two statements my mother used to repeat when I was a child: “This too shall pass,” and “Sometimes you have to either laugh or cry, and I’d just rather laugh.” This combination of hope, perseverance, and humor in the face of struggle has gotten me through many tough breaks.

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