Columns

I recently returned to an old, bad habit that can take up too much of my time if I’m not careful. I enjoy game nights with friends and family, but those nights are few and far between. So instead, I play Risk on my phone when I have some…

I recently binged four seasons of the television series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I will spare you my enthusiastically detailed summary except for this: The main character, June Osborne, is a prisoner in the household of a commander and his wife in Gilead, a totalitarian society in what used…

When you’re a parent of preschool-age children, there’s a large focus on teaching the concept of opposites. Big and small, nice and mean, wet and dry, strong and weak, happy and sad, and so on. The illustrations usually make young children giggle, but the idea also teaches them to…

“So I guess the old saying ‘everything happens for a reason’ is true,” my friend and supervisor Brittany Foster said, ending her presentation. I’m still thinking about her words a month later, as I noted in my last column. We were in the middle of a “culture meeting” with…

When you live under the banner of a degenerative disease such as Friedreich’s ataxia (FA), you become well acquainted with fear. You fear what your body has in store for you tomorrow, next month, next year, and the years after that. You fear falling or accidentally doing something that…

Today at work, my small team visited two of our stores and facilitated friendly competitions in the grocery sport of bagging. July is the beginning of our monthslong pursuit of identifying the best bagger of our company, Nugget Markets, so we can send them to represent us at the national…

In a conversation with a friend, she said, “I guess everything happens for a reason.” Hearing this really bothered me, even though that phrase is pretty ubiquitous; I’ve heard it repeatedly. Behind the phrase is the message that everything will be all right. Sometimes, we desperately need to hear this…

Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) is incredibly rare. So rare, in fact, that I’d never even heard of it before I was diagnosed with it in 2013. Getting that rare, 1-in-50,000-people diagnosis (given to an estimated 2,500 people in the United States) has had a huge impact on my…

I thoroughly enjoy the unexpected twists and turns and the adrenaline rush of roller-coaster rides. I’ve loved roller coasters since I was old and tall enough to ride them. My first experience on one, however, before I was tall enough to technically be allowed to ride it, terrified me. It…

Life with Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) can feel daunting as we face hardships, struggles, and countless tribulations. Most FA patients I know have a positive attitude and try to keep moving forward despite what FA throws in our paths. We don’t necessarily like our diagnosis, nor do we like…

About five years ago, I packed about three DVDs before my buddy and I left for a weekend at a fishing camp. We didn’t plan on watching many movies, I just brought them in case we got bored after the sunset and the bayou mosquitoes chased us indoors. When that…

I can’t exactly put my finger on why, but for a long time, I thought success had to do with how many friends I had. How many of them called me by name and went out of their way to say hello at social gatherings was important to me. But…