I’ve been in the kitchen making cinnamon rolls this morning. In fact I got so excited about baking this morning that I temporarily forgot that I had signed up for a Segullah post today. My good friend had a baby last week, so in the grand tradition of Mormon women everywhere I am going to [...]

I remember when I first discovered my dad’s love of poetry. I was struggling with my homework, voicing my frustration with audible groans and sighs.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
“Analyzing poems for English,” I grumbled.
“Which one?”
“‘Thanatopsis’,” I said, convinced that the title alone would elicit sympathy.

I am in love with this poem by Darlene Young:
Inheritance
I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves, and an old dress
I claimed just because it looked like you.
But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress,
the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past
I can’t make out your face and now [...]

My favorite short story of all time is “That Kind of Party” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Eleven-year-old Terrence, infatuated with neighborhood beauty Dolly Bartlett,  is driven by the headiness of young love to, by whatever means necessary, stage a party in which to play kissing games. He and his sidekick Joe must find a way to rid the [...]

Last week during a special time of the month for me I cried to my husband about what a horrible person I am. I don’t know if you do this, but I start to feel a bit like a big ball of flaws, with nothing good to offer to the world, no talents, no [...]

Sobs muffled my voice as I phoned my husband from the doctor’s office, “Is everything OK?” he worried,”Is the baby all right?”
“Yes. Yes. It’s just that I’ve exercised every day, I’ve been following the stupid diabetic diet and I’ve still gained 10 lbs. this month! I’m getting so FAT. What is wrong with my body?”
Silence.
And [...]

I live in New York City with my husband and our three children. When people find this out (friends from outside the city) they usually respond in one of two ways:
Option1, “You are so lucky. Do you love it? That’s awesome.”
Option 2, “How long do you have to stay there? I don’t know how [...]

My oldest son turns 17 tomorrow—yes, on Valentine’s Day—and already my heart is aching at how soon he will be gone. Just yesterday he was running home from school, blonde bowl-cut hair flying, snow boots carrying muddy puddles into the kitchen and skidding to a stop to wrap his arms around my waist. “I [...]

I’ve never been a private person. The only time I ever got called into the bishop’s office as a teenager, it was for mooning a van full of our ward’s young men on the way home from Youth Conference. When Leslie and I were college freshmen, we never closed the shades to our dorm room [...]

Yesterday we pulled the boxes down out of the attic and performed in reverse the ritual we went through exactly a month ago: garlands rewound, ornaments rewrapped, Christmas stories packed away for another year. My mom always waited until after the New Year to pack up the Christmas decorations, but I was starting to feel [...]

noun
1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
I remember learning the definition of this word from my freshman writing teacher, first year, first semester at BYU. She had us write. A lot. Every week we read, [...]

My dad started a new job in Connecticut in 1979, and he and my mom moved their little family to a Cape Cod cottage, a couple of blocks from Lordship’s Russian Beach. I was four, and I doubt they knew it at the time, but they had picked the perfect place for children to grow [...]

My story is no different than any other.  I grew up Mormon, in Utah.  I was the Laurel class president (Beehive and Mia Maid too).  I went to BYU.  I come from pioneer stock on one side and pioneer + alcoholic stock on the other (beware, this leads to a compulsion to force feed others [...]

We had an amazing Relief Society lesson yesterday. We talked about Elder Bednar’s talk, “Ask in Faith”.

Yesterday, I left my husband in charge of the kids, and went to church early for choir practice. When choir was over, I sat down in a pew, saving it for my family. At 9:00, when the meeting started, I was still sitting solo in the pew. 9:15 came and went, and [...]