Author Archives: Taracho4

Photo by Marcus Woodbridge on Unsplash My son is fascinated with pretty much all aspects of keeping time. He even dutifully stays awake waiting for 11:59 pm to turn into a new month, season, year. So, during winter break, I had a Normal Rockwell daydream of my son and I going to Barnes and Noble […]

If you are a recovering people-pleaser like me, you may need a new approach to New Year’s resolutions.  I didn’t know how much of a people-pleaser I was until I was in a situation that was causing anxiety and stress and couldn’t figure out how to resolve it. Then a trusted friend asked me a […]

Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash Day 22: Simeon “When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes […]

Cartoon Credit: Cuyler Black (Used with Permission. See more at cuylerblack.com) Day 15: The Star of Bethlehem  “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his […]

December 8th: John the Baptist “‘And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before to Lord to prepare the way for him…’” [Luke 1:76] “‘After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down […]

December 1st: Zechariah “Zechariah asked the angel, ‘How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.’” [Luke 1:18] The story of the birth of Jesus begins with doubt. Zechariah has been fervently praying for a child. The angel Gabriel visits and reveals his prayer […]

30 Days of Thankfulness Day 26: Mommy and Son Decoration Day and Gingerbread House Day My son went from no interest and no awareness of Christmas to surpassing me in my excitement. Now my husband has to hold two people back from decorating before Thanksgiving is over. For months my son has been saying “November […]

30 Days of ThankfulnessDay 19: My Friend Hui Hui and I met on an online writing group. When we found out we lived near each other, we started meeting at a local library to write once a month. She already had an agent and a book in the works. It came out this September and […]

30 Days of Thankfulness Day 12: Veterans To all veterans—a huge thank you. Your service goes beyond protecting your country and its citizens. Ray and I watched a documentary on the Korean War and I realized that was the war my grandfather served in. Which made him part of the reason I was even able […]

30 Days of ThankfulnessDay 5: Religious Freedom and Volunteers I am always thankful that I live in a country where I can choose what I believe and gather and worship God openly. And having a child with autism adds another layer of thankfulness. Not every church has enough of a volunteer base to support kids […]

Quick note to subscribers: Sorry there has been crickets in the whale belly lately. I am posting daily on my social media about thankfulness and one of my subscribers asked if I could send them via email. So I am going to do a “weekly roundup” that includes all my thankful jar posts for that […]

In this summer season where time with my son increases I am finding myself falling down the rabbit hole of distraction, taking on editing gigs, outlining new picture books, switching laundry detergents, uncoagulating the top of the dishwashing liquid—anything to avoid the more important thing: playing more with my son. And after some reflection I […]

It was a moment I had waited 9 years for. My son gave me a hug and I said, “I love you!” Instead of the usual silence, he responded, for the first time ever, with a singsong,  “I love you, too!’ As a special needs parent, the experience of waiting for small things, like hearing […]

My husband and I have been attending an amazing church for about a year. Unfortunately, we have been attending online because there is no special needs program for my son. As you can imagine, this creates some obstacles to connecting with people in the congregation. Sometimes you find yourself in a place that makes no […]

In Autism Breakthrough, Raun K. Kaufman comments that many parents and speech therapists will try to provide language to nonverbal kids by constantly narrating when they interact with them. “What’s the problem with narrating? When you do this, you take up all the verbal space. When you take up the verbal space, there is no […]

At around 10pm on Thursday night, my eight-year-old son turned to me and said, “Feeling sick Friday. Stay home.” (He showed no signs of illness.) For a few reasons, I had to pick my jaw off the floor. First, my son, who has limited communication skills and struggles with social interactions, was Ferris Buellering me.  […]

In his book, Autism Breakthrough, Raun explains that since autism is a social-relational disorder, our method of helping our children should be a social-relational one. His method called “joining” stands in contrast to ABA therapy, which attempts to eliminate repetitive, antisocial behavior and replace it with more socially desirable behavior. Raun, who once had autism, […]

On December 23, 2022 we experienced a blackout. We don’t experience them very often, so it triggered anxiety for my son. He kept unplugging the light from the battery pack then back into the wall socket, saying “light on!” and pacing when nothing happened. We tried to explain that it was a blackout, that we […]

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17: 24-25). “For the Lord your […]

“Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into the village, ten men with leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves […]

“Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” (Romans 14:19). Romans 14:19 came to life for me years ago in a Trader Joe’s. I was trying to fill my cart while distracting my sensory-overloaded son with my phone. A woman walked past me, saw me struggling, and […]

“Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.” (2 Corinthians 13:11). My first year teaching my students started bringing me odd gifts as Christmas approached—a wedding album, expired chocolate, old gift cards, a […]

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5) From May through mid-November […]

My son is a “no” kid when it comes to doing most things outside the house. He likes the routine, familiarity, and control he has at home. After countless failed attempts at taking him to parks, zoos, aquariums, theme parks, it can be easy to give up trying new things. And sometimes I do.  The […]

We take our son driving every day for about an hour. It is his time to be in control and he directs us from the back seat, telling us to go left, right, or straight to get to his favorite destinations (currently wherever construction is happening). His primary rule is no music. I quickly became […]

Right in the middle of the Christmas hustle and bustle, the cold I had avoided since 2019 finally caught up with me and forced me to come to a grinding halt on all fronts. My brain wasn’t functioning enough to write, I couldn’t go anywhere, and I was conflicted about licking envelopes and sending my […]

Do you know that in the field of education, books are categorized as educational “experiences?” They are in the same category as field trips. It makes sense. When we can’t take kids into space, reading a book can still paint a vivid picture in their mind of what it is like to travel there. We […]

My seven-year-old son has been reacquainting himself with Laurie Berkner and is currently obsessed with her song The Cookie Bakers of the Night. So, one night, wanting to do something fun with my son,  I asked Caleb if he wanted to bake cookies with me. His response was an affirmative scream.  I got all the […]

My friend’s head hung, her voice a whisper, as she described a missed opportunity to pray for someone. I could almost see God tapping her on the shoulder as she struggled, saying, “That guilt you are carrying? That’s not from me. Put it down.” I used God’s extended grace to comfort my friend, realizing in […]

Do you ever stumble into a perfect metaphor for your parenting in the middle of an ordinary day? I gripped the handlebar and back seat of my son’s bike, walk/running beside him. He wobbled up the hill, thrown off balance as he aggressively swatted my hand away. It seemed to me, in the moment, that […]

Are you a list writer who also tends to get overwhelmed by your lists? I am. The most overwhelming is my three-dimensional list of things I want to read. A huge stack, structurally unsound, staring at me, mocking me, throughout the year. Actually, “stack” is too kind. It is more of a glob with tentacle-like […]

Back in pre-pandemic times, I was caught up with a crowd heading into NYC on a Friday night. The last adjective I would think to describe this scene would be “quiet,” but for some reason, as soon as we all boarded the train it was as if someone hit a mute button. The cause? An […]

This year I finished reading Matthew right at the beginning of the Christmas season. It was nice to be reminded of the end at the beginning. He came to be with us as a baby and, then, in Matthew 28:20 tells us “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the […]

“‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’” Lord of the […]

I don’t know about you, but I feel like the social scene—both media and old school in person—is becoming a dangerous activity riddled with land mines. The negativity coming at me from all different angles is affecting me today. I am empathetic and protective of my friends, loved ones, and random people I don’t even […]

Much like Speed 2, this is an unfortunate sequel. My son Caleb, who has been diagnosed with autism, eloped again. As a seasoned opportunist, he waited until we were on vacation, in a house without all the safety locks we had installed from the last hair-raising experience.  We all know necessity is the mother of […]

As a Christian, I believe the world is messed up because we are in enemy territory. This enemy generally hates when we communicate effectively and so he clouds and smokescreens and sows lies entangled with truth. When I experience depression, the lie is that I should pull in and not talk because I am contaminated […]

It was a flicker of an image on a windy road but enough to make an imprint. A gray swan slid across a flat, dark reservoir, dipping its bill into the water slowly like a fountain pen into inky blackness.  My reflexive desire to involve Google twists the scene into something more haunting. A gray […]

I finally followed Gwyneth Paltrow’s recommendation and learned a language in my time in quarantine. I now speak whale fluently. Before you laugh, guess who is now sunning themselves topside on an obliging whale, absorbing all I can of the liquid hope pouring out of the sun? I am either drunk with power or serotonin, […]

The scene opens with me lying in the belly of the whale again, feeling overqualified for quarantine…  Me (singing): Here I am again on my own… God: Uh… Me: Oops. Keep forgetting You are here. If words were being rationed You would still make excellent points. Ah, the screen. The other way You make excellent […]

Time to draw another chalk line on the inside of this whale belly. Here I am again, this time beneath a massive whale tongue that is squeezing the life out of me. I always admire how You give me such perfect, vivid metaphors for what is happening in my life. Every area of my life […]

My son is steadily collecting frequent flyer miles on these rides in the whale belly. I shouldn’t be surprised. He is often the chief character of my life lessons. Right now he is struggling to gain purchase on a shifting whale tongue while screaming “I want Way Maker again please yes, okay!” I sit in […]

When I finally open my eyes I am floating in shallow, steady, rocking water. I had been doing well, handling what life threw at me with You, God. I was riding the waves instead of succumbing to them. Then a tidal wave hit. You snatched me from the shoreline after being scoured raw by waves […]

My church is doing a series where we are being challenged to slow down and savor the true meaning of Christmas. I think I am the only one whose response was to be more stressed out. Now I have twice as much to do— everything on my list and slow down and be less stressed […]

It was 2004 and I was sitting on my fire escape on a warm summer night taking in the lights and sounds of Jamaica, Queens. Even at 11pm, this far out on an appendage of the city that never sleeps, countless people were in constant motion.  An ice cream truck was still winding through the […]

Have you ever had one of those mornings when you wake up in a puddle of saliva that isn’t yours next to a mangled guitar and slowly begin to realize you’ve been swallowed by a 50-foot, 66,000 lb aquatic mammal?  I sit up and try to put all the pieces together. (Why am I holding […]

I watch my wrecked world suddenly explode. Like Princess Leia, it is from a safe distance. Unlike Princess Leia, I watch half suctioned into the blowhole of a recently surfaced baleen whale who has come to ingest me. Eye contact, imitation, interaction, communication, empathy—benchmarks I didn’t think to even worry about were not being reached […]

By the time the whale swallows me I have been rendered helpless— tangled in gauzy white netting with coiled fishing line binding my wrists and ankles and what I can only imagine is a fuzzy fishing lure stuck in my ear canal. So embarrassing. As a highly developed mammal with opposable thumbs, you would think […]

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 12:40 The waves tumble like scribbled chalk lines across the blue slate ocean. I can see the whale in the […]

Welcome to my soggy penalty box. You didn’t miss much. I just got sucked through whale baleen and am pacing—waterlogged and miffed—combing the krill out of my hair with my fingers. I do NOT have time for this today. Oh, is this your first movie projected on the interior of a whale belly? Silence your […]

Really? This is how you are going to leave me? Foot stuck in the whale’s blowhole wiggling like a spastic marionette? Apparently extreme discomfort is part of this lesson. Thanks for at least flipping the projection upside down for me. I see myself compulsively scrolling through social media and the not-sure-if-it-is-really-the-news news. The world is […]

Here I am, Lord–suctioned to a whale tongue, clothing saturated with saltwater saliva clutching my coffee cup. Look at that grip! Uh, oh. You brought me here to talk about coffee? Can I just say that coffee is full of antioxidant qualities and reduces the risk of infections? It extends your life span, keeps you […]

The first time I clearly heard Your voice I was hurtling through a tunnel toward Manhattan in a steel tube full of the people You created. I sat smugly reading the bible––you know, the book everyone else should be reading and the only correct answer to the “If you were stranded on a desert island […]

I honestly don’t know which is worse, obeying Your orders or laying in a puddle of mucus staring at a whale’s uvula. I was happy to just stay on the surface maintaining status quo on this issue, but this was not Your plan. Sometimes I feel like I am in an awkward three-legged race with […]

Okay, God. Here I am—obviously through divine intervention—sitting on a pile of fish guts in the belly of a whale, rapt with attention. All those cozy, whimsical childhood illustrations of Geppetto fishing by soft lamplight with Figaro off their swallowed, shipwrecked boat—lies. This place is creepy and an assault on the senses. I don’t even […]