A childhood photograph I once could barely look at has become the face of my ten-year-old son. On Han’s Day, two photographs, an old therapist, and a morning together teach us something about trauma, joy, recognition, and what it means to believe someone when they tell you what you cannot see.
Tag Archives: Healing
Just Love Me
When Proverb tells Dad, “I’m not real to you,” he does not mean that Dad doubts he exists. He means that believing a child is real has consequences. On Luke’s Day, a plural family of nine discovers the difference between saying children have a voice and building a life in which their voices actually matter.
Show Me Your Work: Inside the Journal of a Plural Family of Nine
How a Montessori kid, a very large journal, and an artificial intelligence help nine people sharing one body find enough order to live an ordinary life.
We Have Earned Something
After months of fear and freeze, something has begun to move. With the help of friends, the grace of God, and a little acorn found beneath an oak tree, we are learning that receiving help can be an act of agency—and that not everything we earn needs to be measured, named, or turned into a wage.
There Were Eleven People in That Car 
When we listened back to one of our stories, we discovered that eight of our children had disappeared from the arithmetic. There were not three people in that car. There were eleven. The next morning, nine of us left home together—and someone saw us.
This Belongs to Us
This morning, while Dad held four-year-old Jude, he found himself thinking about what was happening to us when we were Jude’s age—and about the difference between what happened to us and what truly belongs to us. Some things were never our purpose. Other things—the good memories, our home, our family, and even a slow cooker filled with Jude’s Stew—are ours to keep.
And We Are a Family
Last night, while Dad held Han, something became clear: the longing between father and son had always traveled both ways. Today, as we prepare to meet a therapist, we are learning that asking for help does not mean becoming less of a family. Maybe it means learning how to live more fully as the family we already are.
Give Us This Day
How much does Proverb have to signal before Dad trusts what he already knows with his heart? On a day filled with fear about therapy, money, work and the future, we discover that we are allowed to ask God for what we need—and that agency may begin with one small thing that belongs to this day.
What Does God Want Us to Build?
Yesterday we asked, “Under what conditions can we act?” Today, on Han’s Day, we find ourselves asking what comes next: What do we carry across the bridge from the life we had, what do we leave behind, and how do we discern what God wants us to build?
The Mailbox
For most of our life, people have looked at the extraordinary things we could do and the ordinary things we could not do and asked, “If you can do that, why can’t you do this?” Today, a trip to the mailbox helped our plural family of nine begin asking a different question: Under what conditions can we act?
