Learning to savor the here and now, will prepare and sustain us for all life has to offer. I learned that lesson living beside my son’s hospital crib. I’m trying to learn it again now that life has returned to stability.
My name is Kathryn Anne Casey.
This page is an invitation to you to join me as we learn to mark the beauty, joy and pain in daily life and to embrace all the present moment has to offer.
I am a freelance writer, farmer-florist, mother, former life coach/prevention specialist, wife and mother of five children here on earth and three in Heaven (two by miscarriage and one stillborn caused by anencephaly). My youngest son has a rare genetic mutation called SPINT2 and is TPN dependent.
Here you will find writing and photography centered on beauty, psychology and grief, faith, family life and the importance of local community. Elsewhere in the world, you can find my work on Accepting the Gift, Mind&Spirit, 209 Magazine, Parent.co, and Verily Mag; and the print-only weekly newspaper, the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch.
When you subscribe, you will receive a no-pressure weekly reprinting my newspaper column offering a moment of reflecting base on the basics fo daily life.
Where to Start
If you are new to the site, I recommend you start with some of my most popular posts:
Around House: The Triple Bunk Bed
On the Feminine Genius: A Comedienne’s Way of Being in the World
On Parenting: The Most Important Advice I Could Give a Stay-at-Home-Parent
On Chronic Illness: What Was the Miracle? : Reflecting on our Pilgrimage to Detroit
On Coping: Seeing Beyond the Storm Cycle of Anxiety
On Grief and Hope: The Story of Our Year: A Eulogy
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My Biography
Country-grown in Hughson, California, I spent my middle school afternoons changing positions while I devoured works by the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. Parish ministry long hours of novel reading to spiritual reading, as piety reordered my life. After serving with NET Ministries, I moved to Minnesota to complete my undergraduate degree at the University of St. Thomas.
My education was spent studying psychology, grounded in Catholic thought, at Divine Mercy University. Upon graduation, my husband and I dove headlong into family life, facing the typical and atypical struggles of married life: job searches, the search for marital bliss, miscarriages, babies, homeschooling and finally, some financial stability. After the birth of our medically-complex son, Peter, and then the birth and death of our daughter Celeste from anencephaly, life set itself on a new course. We may never have played it smart, but we remained open to the adventure life has to offer.
Grief set me on the quest for beauty. Sharing moments of beauty with others reminds us we not only have each other but point us to something greater than this word, the super-beautiful God the Father. Along with the women of Jerusalem, I want you to know you are not alone. I will share my moments of grief and moments of joy and listen as you share your own. We can walk this road together.
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Contact
To stay in touch, sign up for my mailing list.
I’d love to hear your story about your own journey.
~ Kathryn
God’s creations should be highlighted even by our human hands. God Bless
a pleasure “meeting you” ( on line that is), I read a few pages of your blog pieces; you can write well and clearly about the emotional journey of life. I’ll return to read more.
My mother had three late term miscarraiges, that broke her heart, two girls and a boy, I was her last try…I made it, her only child. She told me all their names, the lost siblings, never born…I missed them, imagined them, felt a sense of loss in that I felt Mom’s greif for them and would have enjoyed a brother and sisters so much. My mom died before I married, so she was never able to see her 7 grand children through me or her great grand kids. When I look at them, I thank her so much for that last try which took such courage after so many painfully lost children…I thank her for my life and all my children and grandchildren….little pieces of her, that would not exist if not for her courage to go on, to continue to try to bear a child. Thanks Mom
I hold stories like these very close to my heart as my children are so young they will not likely remember the birth of their sister, but I so desire her place to always be felt in our family. We are all touched in some way by the cross. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your mother’s story.