This is far from my first complicated Mother’s Day. Throughout my life as my relationship with Mom went through some pretty drastic ups and downs, there have been times when I wasn’t sure how to handle the holiday or how to approach her about it. Since 2015, though, it’s been consistently fraught.

My parents met in art school, and when they got married, one of their professors, a well-known painter in the area, gifted them with a large, impressive painting comprised of multiple paintings of each of them.

By the time I got there it was like it had been erased.

It was March of 2011 when Mom decided to leave my father and asked if it would be okay with us if she came to live in Tennessee, and as soon as she asked me that question there were several things that I knew right off the bat.

I’ve been dreaming about Mom a lot.

It’s too easy a metaphor, all the boxes that are living in my house now.

For over twenty years I've been telling my life story and marking parts of my life through tattoos. My tattoos are odd and eclectic and don't much look like they go together, because they weren't planned to go together. Each one represents the time when I got it -...

I've known for a couple months that I wanted to set up a blog to focus on this topic, and as soon as I had the idea of using the domain imeanttodothis.com I knew it was what I wanted. I had to go through some hoops to get the domain, but fortunately...