Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Family scripts

I am over 30 years old.  I have given birth to two children.  I backpacked through Eastern Europe before the time of cell phones, Mapquest, and GPS.  I have lived in major cities in the US,  I am good at parallel parking, and I can even change a flat tire.
But when I travel with my [...]

Having a Moment

I stand there staring at everyone. Some are looking at me, some aren’t. Some might not even be paying attention. There are a lot of children, some drawing, others whispering, still others not bothering to whisper. Behind me sit three men, one balding, the other two in various stages of gray. They all have an [...]

Trek to Church

When winter comes to Vienna, so does the arctic air. I have never, ever, in my life been as cold as I was in Vienna. The ceiling opens up and the arctic air blows into the city and the surrounding villages. When you first see the Viennese women in their fur coats–sable, [...]

Black Sabbath

My roommate in college used to joke that everything I brought from home was possessed.

Christmas Pain, Christmas Joy

Four years ago, the week before Christmas, my mother-in-law suffered a heart attack. While this was not unanticipated, it was a hard thing to have happen at Christmas. She seemed to respond to us at first, but as time passed we could no longer reach her, and machines sustained her life, feeding her [...]

And Mary Kept All Things

Every year at Christmas, I ponder about the birth of Savior, but I also think about His mother, Mary.

My Christmas Report

Before we begin, let me recap. I decided to live smaller and consume less (and subsequently wrote declaring that I would). Can I just tell you that I honestly thought Christmas would be a joyous occasion where our homemade gifts would warm the hearth, and the love we shared by making everything would fill our [...]

Writing with Charity

Before you start reading this post, I have to apologize for its length. I’m new to the blogging world, and I’m pretty sure I’ve committed a breach of blogging etiquette. I got started, though, and couldn’t stop, and I still don’t feel like I’ve made myself entirely clear. But I had to [...]

Leap-Frogging Forgiveness

My mother is petite and has sewed her entire life, making suits and other perfectly tailored items of clothing, to fit her small frame. Over the years she assembled a large number of beautiful hand-crafted clothes. A friend of mine, a recently divorced single mom, was about to enter the workforce for the [...]

I remember many things, but mostly cookies

I remember the way the white counter tops would be covered with scores of paper plates, droopy under their load: cookies. Lots and lots of cookies.

I Count

I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, surrounded by piles of dirty dishes, tired from holiday preparations and pregnancy hormones, worried about an upcoming sacrament meeting talk that I hadn’t even found time to start yet, and frazzled by a long day of attending to the children’s needs, when it hit me. This [...]

I Believe in Santa Claus. But, I didn’t used to.

As a brand new mom, I thought it might be better to skip the whole Santa thing, telling my children from the beginning the truth about those stuffed stockings and wrapped packages.

Sweet Enough

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire settles softly in my ears like snow, and this time, right now, it doesn’t seem festive. It seems filled with longing and a wistful sadness. Or maybe it’s just me. Or Tony Bennett’s voice. I stare and stare out the window, lost in the space-like abyss of snowflakes.
My baby [...]

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

Can you hear Mr. Roger’s singing, “Who are the people in your neighborhood? in your neighborhood?  in your neighborho-oo-od?” Please keep that theme in your mind as you read this entry, because we are going to start a regular feature on Segullah blog (if we get a good response, that is) where we introduce one [...]

I Have a Secret

Shh, don’t tell, I don’t have a calling right now in my ward.
I was released in May of this year from Young Women, after seven years. I’ve been through two presidencies and thousands of girls. OK, not thousands, my ward is pretty small, but I’d seen my fair share of beehives make it [...]

Shop! (or Walmart’s stock will drop)

Yesterday I sustained the American economy. I’m trying to do my part, you know, to keep us from plummeting into a recession and reverting back to the Great Depression. So me and Amazon and Target, we bonded. With a little help from my Visa.
I would hate to see stores go out of business, or [...]

Facing the Elements

We’ve had some cold days here in the city. What with global warming and all I guess have started to expect that cold weather and snow is going to be a rarity, even in December. But last week it got cold and the freezing temperatures snapped me into the reality of winter pretty darn quick. [...]

If you Happen to Catch the Palsy

The trouble with being cosmetically disabled is that it is easy to forget.

Word Games

We gals here at Segullah fancy ourselves and our readers as the literary type — well, at least as the type of women who want desperately to believe that there are excellent LDS writers out there, or even just excellent writers in general. So here’s the challenge (and I’ll be the first to take it [...]

Oh the Glitz and the Glamour!

Carina will be blogging with us during the month of December. She is an admitted nomad who has lived all over the world but after having settled in Provo, says she loves it best. Some guy talked her into marrying him and then they were persuaded to welcome two rapscallions into their home. [...]

Are Mothers Born or Made?

Here is another welcome guest post from Andrea R. There are days when I am covered in barf, poop, pee, and mucus, when children are clamoring, and when juggling two little ones and a disabled child leave me feeling completely overwhelmed.  I think to myself, “I am NOT cut out for this job!”Having grown up in [...]

Que Sera, Sera

I look at the pictures of myself right before my first pregnancy bloomed in the expanse between my hip bones, and get an overwhelming urge to pat my own naïve head, to chuckle and tell that girl that there is so much she doesn’t know about what will be.

Best. Worst. Funniest. Craziest.

Christmas moment, ever. (or fill in your own adjective)
We’d love to publish your Christmas story at Segullah (we’ll be featuring these all month!). Please submit your guest post to maralise 7 at aol dot com.
And of course, Merry Christmas!