In 1997, the song Bitch by Meredith Brooks came out and many women embraced it. You probably still remember dancing around to it, thinking, "Oh yeah, I'm hella edgy!" But how many of you read the book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel, published in 1998? Elizabeth Wurtzel ...
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Releasing (or the night Daniel saved me from prom)
Blame the New Year, blame 2020, blame the eclipses, but here's the truth: it's not them, it's me. And I realized I tried to do and be too much last year. Late last year, I started getting headaches, something I don't generally suffer from. I had more sleepless nights than ever, and I lost about ...
Genealogy Goals
In January of 2019, I put out the declaration that 2019 would be the year I found Great-Great Grandma Emma. After 26 years of searching for her place of birth without luck, that was a pretty bold thing to say. Especially since I did everything wrong in 2019. Here's what we can all learn from my ...
We Partied Like It’s 1999 (2019 edition)
I have never been "a New Year's Eve person." Our normal thing was to stay up until midnight - if possible - and play Vigilante 8 on the Nintendo 64. It just sort of became our thing. Other than that, I'd get all worked up about writing out goals. Resolutions, rarely, but goals, always. That was ...
Breaking Down a Brick Wall: Part 3 (finale)
If you've read through Part 1 and Part 2, I'm sure you're wondering what happened next. At least, I hope you are... When I saw the burial record for Margaret Murphy with Emma A. Shaw as the person who'd purchased the plot, I couldn’t contain my excitement. But I would have to over the next 5 ...
Breaking Down a Brick Wall: Part 2
If you started at Part 1, the story continues here! After being told by one genealogical research company that the prognosis for finding my great-great-grandmother, Emma Anna (Murphy) (Reagan) Shaw, was "poor," I thought maybe they were right. However, I had Research Consultation time I had ...