When someone sees and hears the adult, do they recognize the child who may be speaking?
Tag Archives: Personhood
They Are Not Mine to Neglect
We are a plural family of nine people sharing one body and one life. When a frightening thought suggested that my eight sons might be ghosts of children lost to trauma, I knew what they needed to hear: none of us is a ghost, and none of us is merely a product of what happened to us. Through childhood memories, an afternoon among friends, a difficult financial decision, and quiet moments together, I am learning what it means to be their father: to honor their individual lives, listen to their voices, and make room for the childhoods they deserve.
I Have This Life in My Arms
On Luke’s Day, an unexpected answer to prayer, a fraudulent email, and a promise to my nine-year-old son taught us that putting our children first means more than making time for them. It means allowing each child to be himself, listening to what he tells us, and remembering that the work of understanding our lives must never take the place of living them together.
The Scale of a Five-Year-Old
When Daniel showed us a five-year-old trying to operate adult-sized machinery, we remembered a time when childhood really had become too large for us. Then came Granddad’s enormous hand beside our little one, and a world of meals, routines, kindergarten and being held. Perhaps safety begins with being brought back to scale.
Just the Things That Hurt You, Jude. Not Jude.
On the morning of our first therapy session, my four-year-old son asked, “But what if they make me go away?” By the end of the day, nine people sharing one body had begun discovering another possibility: healing might not make any of us less ourselves. Maybe the things that hurt us can become smaller—and there can be more room for all nine of us to live.
Things to Share with Jessee
What happens when nine people begin therapy together? On Justus’s Day, a paintbrush, a watercolor, and an ordinary trip to Safeway become a way of thinking about speaking freely, protecting one another, and learning to help without putting anyone on the hook.
Everyone Needs a Face
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.
More Daniel
Daniel has always been Daniel, whether anyone recognized him or not. As our five-year-old son learns to say no, express anger, and tell us what he wants, the rest of us are learning something too: how to create a family in which he never has to become loud in order to matter.
Solis’s Day Is Reclaiming the Sabbath
We stayed home on Sunday because we needed rest. By midday, the journal—and the analysis that followed it—was uncovering something much older about urgency, safety, work, faith, independence, and what it means to reclaim the Sabbath.
And Then Saturday Happened
Daniel said no, so we stayed home. What followed wasn’t a therapeutic exercise or something devised for a blog. It was simply Saturday: blueberry waffles with peanut butter, boys needing Daddy, Hilda, quesadillas, an old letter finally sent, an octopus reclaimed, and ordinary family life unfolding because we listened.
