Notes from the Red Bird House

It's not a daily thing. Days pass and I don't even give her a thought. Then a cousin sends some old pictures and I spend a bit of time missing her. My girlfriend, when I show her the pics my cousin sent, comments on how much I look like my mom. Maybe that's because with my hair longer and shaggy like this (Mom in her 40s and 50s tended to get the same wingy sides as I do when my hair is this length), I do look a lot like her. So much that I see her every time I look in the mirror. I always knew it would happen. It means my mom is around. I guess I'm lucky that way. I get to miss her less. Still there are times...moments...when I'm taken completely by surprise...when suddenly I miss her. I remember the first time. I was walking up the main paint aisle at work, just doing my normal thing in the middle of a normal workday. It was February, I'm sure of. Mom had been gone maybe six weeks. I hadn't spent even one moment missing her. I thought I'd come to ter

"Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.  Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they are never weakness."  ~ Brene Brown "We can do hard things." ~ Glennon Doyle I was super, duper close to titling this blog/vlog "Weakness, Actually." I wanted to play on what is apparently turning into a series of blogs/vlog ending with the word "actually." I started by posting an old blog called "Courage, Actually" as a vlog a few weeks back and then followed up last week by posting a vlog of a new blog called "Ironic, Actually." The latter was intended to be a rebuttal of the former. See? I'm really not as courageous as I may have led y'all to believe. Reception to my crow-eating rebuttal was all-together positive. People get fear - they really do. By and large, they thought it took a lot of courage to write and speak openly about my fears and my battle with them. Still.......

A couple days ago, I posted my first ever vlog. It was  just me reading an old blog from December 2018 called, "Courage, Actually." I chose it specifically because it's about accepting life's challenge and fearlessly stepping outside your comfort zone. Making and posting a video of myself was a big step outside my personal comfort zone - in fact, I have long said it's something I would never do - so I felt the topic was timely and appropriate. Reception of the vlog among my Facebook friends and followers was immediately positive. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Courage for the win. I worry, though, that I have falsely painted myself as some courageous-comfort-zone-and-fear-defying crusader. In reality, that's just not me. Not these days...and I think it's time for me to come clean. It's kind of ironic, actually. And hard for me to admit. This might be the barest I have stripped myself in a long time. For the past few months, I have been mired in