Painting faces..

As fas as I can remember, my mother has been an artist. She has China Painted, sketched, used watercolors, pastels, even zentangle designs. Growing up she would bring her face paints with us every summer to our family reunion at our family's dairy ranch. Our Perazzo family would gather all 42 of us cousins and she would paint all of our faces!! Even some of the adults. It was a memory that defined...

Read More

Honoring the pieces of me..

I am multi-racial. What does that mean to me? It means I am Lakota, Dutch Indonesian, Swiss, and Portuguese. I am pieces put together, a cultural mural of mosaic textures and histories compiled into one portrait. Me. I am proud to be all of my pieces, and most recently in life I honor the part of me who is Lakota. I spent the past few years learning, observing, and immersing myself in my culture....

Read More

Finding Peace in uncertainty..

What I love most about this verse, is that it doesn't say that with "discipline you get what you want." It says that it produces a "harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." Where am I going with this.. I'm not a biblical scholar, or a pastor, or anyone claiming to know it all. I do know that I am a daughter of God, and with that title on my heart I find myself...

Read More

In the house that built me..

Some may say that choosing to live in your parents house again as a family is a step backwards, but I can't express enough how wonderful it has been. Its been healthy and healing. Imagine how for centuries humans lived together in large family groups. Joys and frustrations were shared and nothing was shouldered alone. We've rotated our cooking dinners, and discovered that it gives all of us a break. Then...

Read More

Closing chapters..

Maybe it's because I'm a writer, but I tend to view phases and stages in life as chapters of a book, or railroad tracks. Sometimes we journey through life and transition slowly into our next phase of life the way a railroad track would transition slowly from one country to the next, not realizing the change even happened until we look up and compare terrains. Other times we transition abruptly,...

Read More

Being the calm to his storm...

My son Hunter is 4. He has Tourettes Syndrome, as well as Anxiety, OCD, and we begin tests for Autism this week. He has many triggers that can cause an absolute melt down which includes kicking and screaming, throwing his body no matter what is around him, and being inconsolable. His 2 year old sister causes a LOT of these upsets. She breaks his legos, or takes something he's playing with and runs...

Read More

Meeting his Heroes...

Hunter has been taken to Dr. appointment after lab test after Dr. appointment in these past few weeks, and after a few emails between myself and our local Fire department as well as my neighbor getting in contact with a relative who is a Fire Captain, I was able to bring Hunter and Emma to see 2 Fire Stations here in Fremont. At our first visit, Hunter was extremely quiet. He didn't want to shake...

Read More