Find a New Beginning

This Covid year has taught me to be grateful for so many things I have had and all that I have earned. This Father’s Day and every other day from December 9 th , 2018, (I Started calling you DAD) I want to thank the man who became my Father by choice. Of course, I am not making it up, you did STEP UP. THANK YOU FOR NEVER GIVING UP. I remember what a brat I was in my younger days that you witnessed, and I know it couldn’t have been easy to deal with me, especially with my lows and then every inch of me after I got married. Your persistence and determination have not gone unnoticed. I probably deserved you, to write me off long ago, but you refused to give up. Thank you for always loving me. CHEERS FOR ALWAYS BELIEVING YOU ARE and WILL BE MY DAD, NO MATTER WHAT. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to tell you that you weren’t my real dad, the entire world around us did, and they always will., but you are, you always will till my last breath. “Real” isn’t determined by DNA. You’r...

Today, my husband and I celebrate our third wedding anniversary. THREE YEARS. I know, I can barely believe it myself. When we got married, I thought we’d spend years 1 and 2 and 3 on a luxurious island vacation, or stretch out on the beach of a high-end resort. In reality, we are stuck at home and maybe just trying to bunk in the middle of the lockdown to some local café or just stay home, pray, and wait to cook a splendid dinner. The way we choose to celebrate our anniversary isn’t the only thing that may turn out differently than I’d expected, but my husband and I are, inarguably, both very different people than we were on our wedding day. Our basic way of life, our career paths, our political views, our idea of personal growth, our general life plans, even our spiritual growth journey that we expected to work out together, all have shifted throughout the last three years — but we’re still together, and we’re still happy and we’re still in love (I think). Our partnership is ungla...