Tag: daughter

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Is It Weird That I Want A New Best Friend?

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.  Here’s this week’s column: I want to ask her to be my new best friend. I haven’t exactly actually met her yet. There’s that. My teenaged daughter is already freaking out at the idea. There’s that, as well. “It’s stalker, creepy,” she informs me. “What? Dreaming of making someone I’ve not actually met my new BFF?” This conversation is

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Family, Parenting

The Day I Wish All Moms Could Have

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.  Here’s this week’s column:     It seems unfair.      Really unfair.      It’s something so wonderful I wish all moms could have it.      And yet, only a small minority of us get to.      My fellow adoptive Moms, this is the column you could’ve written. That Sad Look         You know that sad look some people give when they see someone

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Family, I Screwed Up, Parenting, The Hard Stuff

It’s Going To Be One Messy Year

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.  Here’s this week’s column: Well, hello there, New Year you, who promises to be 12 months, 365 days, 8,766 hours, 525,948,766 of mess. It’s not that I’m starting the year as a Negative Nelly. It’s actually more about being grateful for what and who I have, which leads to reality, which in my case, and perhaps yours, means accepting life is messy. Anyone

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Family, Parenting

Thinking About Someone Special On My First Mother’s Day

             I think about her every day. We are forever linked through one of the greatest joys of my life. And I’ll never be able to tell her. That’s what I find myself thinking about this, my first Mother’s Day as a mother. I’ll never be able to say “Thank you” to the woman who started the job I’m blessed to continue. She is my daughter’s other mother. I’ve shared here in this column how I’ve recently come to

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Family, Parenting

Why Didn’t Anyone Warn Me Before I Adopted My Daughter?

  If I’d only known. Somehow, I thought by adopting a full-sized kid I would avoid biological changes to my body. Silly me. I met my daughter when she was 11. We finalized the adoption earlier this year. No, there were no post-pregnancy pounds to lose, as I had my figure back within minutes of signing those papers. I can’t blame any stretch marks on my body on pregnancy. Those were of my own making. But there is one key

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Still Not Easy Learning To Share

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.  Here’s this week’s column: My parents’ chiding still rings in my head. “Daryn, you need to learn to share your favorite doll and toys with your little sister.” Ah, memories of being 8 years old and being taught to share. Now as an adult, it seems to me of all the absurd things we try to teach and expect kids to do with

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Do You Let Your Kids Watch?

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.  Here’s this week’s column: “Chirpity chirp!” went my phone alerting me to a text message. Nothing like interrupting a special moment with my kid with what turned out to be a heavy philosophical question about parenting. There I was a couple weeks ago, snuggled up on the couch watching TV with my daughter when I heard my phone chirpity chirp. The text was

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