We cannot change what we do not acknowledge. I am by no means an expert on race or history. I am just someone who didn’t know what I didn’t know until I needed to know it. Because it is my honor to be the mother of children of a different race than mine, placed into my hands by their first-mothers and through our open adoption arrangement, it is my privilege to have my eyes are opened on a daily basis. When I share things about race, it’s not out of a desire to be performative, to shame...

Broken family.

I’ve heard this phrase slung around since I was a kid. It was always said in hushed and judging  tones. “Well, no wonder that happened. She comes from a broken home.” “What can you expect? He comes from a broken family.” But nobody ever explained why the family was broken, who broke it and how they broke it. There was just this horrible feeling of un-redeemability that surrounded the whole idea along with the idea that any bad thing that happened could and should be ...

Soooooo, it’s been a little crazy. There’s been some stuff. There’s been some things.

You know what the problem is with being committed to growth and awareness? That the universe takes you at your word and provides the opportunities to test your commitment to those goals. You know, growth opportunities.

Sometimes those growth opportunities strip you to the very core of yourself. For me, this last week has laid bare all my most vulnerable and tender layers, brought up deep past trauma...

Today pondering Matthew 25:36 "I was in prison and ye came unto me."

Our Father in Heaven never meant for this life to be a prison to us, but sometimes the things we go through build up chains and walls around our hearts that keep us from moving towards Him. This last year I've been doing a lot of work on freeing myself from those chains, so I can become what He wants me to be.

A big portion of that work has been reclaiming my "inner child" and settings straight believes that had been twisted ...

Sometimes I want to write about something, but so does everyone else, so I don’t, but then it comes back to me so many times that I do it anyway.

Lots of people, women in particular, have written about how the movie Wonder Woman affected them. They’ve written about female empowerment from a thousand different angles. It was great. I loved the articles and the discussions surrounding them.

The first time I saw Wonder Woman, I was in the theatre with a group of real life Wonder Women; wom...

Choose Your Own Adventure. Does anyone remember these books?

“You're The Star! 40 Thrilling Endings!

Will You Become Trapped In Time?

You are hiking in Snake Canyon when you find yourself lost in the strange, dimly lit Cave of Time.  Gradually you can make out two passageways. One curve downward to the right; the other leads upward to the left. It occurs to you that the one leading down may go to the past and the one leading up may go to the future. Which way will you choose?

If you tak...

Hang with me here. I’m going to try and bring this all together. Also, in the interest of full disclosure…I love Jesus, but sometimes I swear.

The D-word. Divorce. I’ve done twice. The first time I did it because I was left with no choice. I never thought I’d do it again, but I did. It was horrible, horrible both times. The second time it was more of a choice, but a choice I agonized and prayed over for a long time.  Both times it simultaneously killed me and set me free. It killed m...

I had, errrr, I mean, got to give a talk in my new  LDS church ward today. It was the shortest talk ever, being cut down by about 8 minutes as I sat there watching the time tick, tick, tick away after being scheduled to be the concluding speaker at the homecoming talk of a Sister Missionary (why do they do that?!). But I think it may have made the talk stronger. It certainly was short and to the point. And, like, BAM! Sister Beitler's in the house. Lol. Anyway. I had some requests to have a c...

You know how everyone is choosing a word that will be the theme for their year? I think I’ve found mine. I wanted it to be something like “JOY” or “HOPE” but instead I think it will be “CODDIWOMPLE”. Coddiwomple means to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.I feel like I'm being very purposeful, but the exact destination seems to elude me.

This is why Coddiwomple is my word for 2017.

I’ve been looking for a rental for about a month now. I started on the ...

I sit here on Christmas morning alone. Lots of people have asked me if it will be hard to not have my kids on Christmas, did I need anything, did I want to come over. I am so grateful for their kindness but I’m okay. I don’t feel alone. I’m spending the day with my Savior. First times are always hard. Change is always hard. Bringing fourth new traditions and finding joy in sorrow is something I am getting better at. Sometimes people will see that I’ve been crying and they might think ...

I wake up this Sunday morning on my day off at 5:00 am. Ugh. But I’m rested and I’ve learned that when waking that early it’s best to get up and do something, starting with a talk with God, because if I lay there it inevitably turns into a talk with Satan, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

This post goes out to everyone whose life has turned out differently then they’d hoped. Those people who were on a track that seemed to stretch into eternity with no change in sight, and then all of the sudden, PLOT TWIST!

Well, not really all the sudden. What’s going on in my life right now has taken years to happen and years to come to fruition. Years for things to be cried over, agonized over, worked over, prayed over, and decided on. Years for things that needed to break to break. Ye...

From The Independent:

The show highlights the impact of eye disease on a person’s life, family, and community. Several conditions are explored, including diabetic retinopathy, uveitis, macular degeneration, and keratoconus, a degenerative eye disease affec...

Love him or hate him, not many teachers have worked as hard for the students of Southern Utah as Mr. Holt. Ferron Holt has been a music educator and teacher for 37 years; first at Delta High School, then in the Washington County School District, and has been a member of the Utah Music Educators Association since 1976. In that time it is estimated that he has taught upwards of 10,000 students the joys of music and hard work. How do I know how hard Mr. Holt has worked during the years of his te...

One of the ways I process the things that go on in my life, besides excessive chocolate consumption and binge series watching on Netflix, is to do a painting about it. Ever since my eye sight started getting blurry in early 2012, vision has been on my mind. I did one painting exploring my angst over the initial diagnosis of Keratoconus, a degenerative eye disease that causes the deterioration of the cornea and brings with it ghosting, double or triple images, severe sensitivity to sunlight, d...

So facebook is a big time suck for me. I love reading about how everyone’s life is going and seeing pictures of their lives.  I have smart, thoughtful, diverse friends, and I enjoy hearing their opinions and experiences.  I have funny friends and I like to laugh.

This last week, a friend tuned me into a facebook app that has helped me waste about 5 hours of my life. It takes your old status updates and uses them to generate new status updates for you. I generally consider myself a pretty ...

Here’s the newest member of the Celestial Chickens Series and the first rooster to be so honored, Brutus. This painting is in memoriam, as Brutus, a six month old Mille Fleur Serama cockerel that belonged to KATHY SHEA MORMINO, THE CHICKEN CHICK® passed away suddenly this week. You can read more about Brutus here.

I love painting chickens. I love their feathers, their colors, their personalities. Where does the “Celestial” come from? I’m not sure exactly, but it started out as a jo...

As the date of my eye procedures drew closer, I was filled with anxiety. The feelings were so intense, I was a little afraid I might have a heart attack. I could not relax, I could not calm down, and I could not get my body to respond to what my mind knew, that everything was going to be okay. I doused myself with calming oils, took long, hot showers, read fantasy novels, wasted time on Pinterest, but nothing helped me calm down. Finally the Sunday before we left, I was able to enjoy a church...

There are certain things you hear a lot when you have adopted children. How did you know you could love someone else’s kids? Do you love them like you love your kids? Isn’t it weird that they don’t look like you? Are you worried about problems they might have that you might not know about? Does is feel the same as your own kids? You’re friends with their birth moms? Isn’t that weird?

Now, every one’s experiences are unique and I can only speak to my own, but I thought I’d share...

Hey, don’t get me started! A family pet that produces healthy food, provides relaxation, good work ethic, amusement, artistic inspiration and even affection. That’s my ladies, my chickens.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              ...

What an amazing week. It’s times like these that almost (almost) make me glad for the struggles of life. It’s times like these that reaffirm my belief in love, friendship, the basic goodness of humanity. I struggle a bit with being on the receiving end of such generosity and I have to take a deep breath and kind of distance myself from the experience. I think if I really let myself be completely in the moment of what is going on in my life right now, I would be so overwhelmed that I would...

I just got this email in regards to my eye condition, Keratoconus.

“Dr. Boxer Wachler reviewed your records, and thinks that you would be a good candidate for the following: Holcomb C3R Crosslinking System in both eyes to help halt the progression of Keratoconus; this is anticipated to be a one-time treatment. However, approximately 1% of the patients will have a second treatment for full benefit. This procedure will help save your eyesight, and help prevent the need for a corneal transpla...

Someone on Facebook made a snarky comment the other week about all the drama that has occurred in my life lately and how I kept posting about it, and how they were a little sick of hearing about it all. My first thought was hey sunshine, no one is sicker of the drama then the person it is happening to. Then I thought of those people, you know you have some too, those who are forever complaining, forever a victim, seem to not really want to get better. Was I being one of those? Gosh, I hope no...

Even though adoption has changed a lot in the last few years, even though I belong to a church that celebrates families, eternal connections through generations and even has a past of *gasp* women sharing a husband, people still get freaked out when they find out we have two open adoptions. This means that both our younger boys’ birth families are involved in their lives, included in our family events, and are treated as extended family. 

My blog is not much of a real blog. I’m not signed up with one of the cool blogging sights, I don’t have any advertisements, and I don’t even have a comment thingy besides facebook link. I do it as a place to share thoughts with friends and anyone who cares to know more about me, why I act the way I do, why I think the way I do, why I paint what I do.

I’ve been told that to have a successful blog you need lots of followers, you need to post at least once a week, you need to create a...

Sight. Sometimes we don’t notice when our spiritual sight is dimming, but we always notice when our physical eye sight grows worse. Our spiritual vision can dim very slowly. It can happen so slowly, we might not realize how we don’t take time to do the things we need to fill our soul anymore; how we let the things of the world come between us and things of eternal value, until we are figuratively blind. Then we sit there and wonder how things got so bad in our lives.

I’ve been surrounded by music my whole life. My dad is a band teacher and a piano tuner, my grandpa wrote music, played the guitar and harmonica Dylan style before there was a Dylan. The highlight of every Christmas Eve was the family talent show and sing-along. All of this naturally led me to become….an artist. Right, I know. But you have to understand, as much as I love music, I also have a pretty serious problem with performance anxiety. Piano lessons were fine, but since I never figur...

I’ve been here before. When I woke up in the ICU after having my son, Nathan, and found out that I no longer had a uterus I went through a long process of dealing with the fact that my reproductive powers were no longer under my control. And, hey, if you don’t have a uterus any more, well, you think about what it means to be a woman.

This brings up the question; who decides what it means to be a woman? Society and my religious views have very divergent thoughts on what it means to be a...