Family of Origin

Some days, you just need to feel connected to your source. Isn't my mother beautiful? Doesn't my brother look happy? And look how my father's posture reveals his intent to guard and protect. It was the very core of who he was. No wonder he chose the law.

As for me, that curiosity in my face is a large part of who I am. My family will tell you I want to know the details of everything, especially people's hearts. When we were growing up my brother would halt my incessant questions with an irritable, "Stop interrogating me." I wanted to know. My mother and father would answer all my questions, however, patiently and honestly and thoroughly. Their philosophy was if I was old enough to be curious about a thing, I was old enough to have the truth. They felt if I opened a book to read it, then I was old enough to take it in. There was no nervous oversight of the information coming to me, no sense ever that a category of information was "beyond" me. I appreciate them for that. They helped shape a future journalist.

I look at my own children now, wading deeper into the stream of their lives, ready for their own futures to claim them. I hope we gave them what they needed. I hope we did okay.