musings, life lessons & poetry from Theresa Jarosz Alberti

Tag: Maud Hart Lovelace

My Tiniest Vacation

It’s one of those years. (Well, hopefully it’s just ONE YEAR with no repeats, ever.) The options for vacation are pretty limited, so I decided on a day trip, since the car we’re leasing gets turned in soon and we have a lot of unused miles on it. I decided to go to Mankato, Minnesota, a 90-minute drive south, and asked my daughter Gennie to come along. I was so happy she said yes. The corona virus and quarantining has changed the kinds of interactions I have with people, and I relished a whole day to spend with her, all the talking and laughing and sharing we would do. 

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Divorce Lesson #5: Thanksgiving–Changing It Up

Some of you may remember four years ago when I was posting Divorce Lessons. I was going through a pretty traumatic time in my life after Bob had asked for a divorce in September 2014. I started blogging about what I was going through and what I was learning in those raw, vulnerable months. In Lesson #5, I posted about what our Thanksgiving looked like that year, and how I was making changes to create new routines, a possibly New Normal at a time when nothing felt normal.

I’m reposting it today. I’m finding that as I look back at that time and the many things I learned in the process are good for me to practice today. Of course, after going through many rocky months, much therapy, many changes, and Bob living in an apartment for almost two years, we did not get divorced. And that’s just one of the many things I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving.

I hope you enjoy this repost, and have a very happy Thanksgiving, my friends!


[November 30, 2014] Technically, this Thanksgiving was the dreaded First Holiday. Maybe next year will be more drastically different since our living situation will have changed and we’ll be further down this road, but this year, with all the divorce-talk, the holiday has certainly had a different feel. Continue reading

Divorce Lesson #5

Technically, this Thanksgiving was the dreaded First Holiday. Maybe next year will be more drastically different since our living situation will have changed and we’ll be further down this road, but this year, with all the divorce-talk, the holiday has certainly had a different feel.

I’m a planner, a list-maker, a researcher. I like to figure things out, sometimes to my detriment, but often it is a strength. So weeks ago, as I saw Thanksgiving looming, I knew it would in some ways *be* different, and I wanted to make it even *more* different. Which brings me to lessons I learned this year as I did so… Continue reading

Huh.  Apparently I’ve been a trendsetter, or at least ahead of the curve,  just by making decisions about my name 24 years ago.  Who’d’ve guessed?

An article in the  Minneapolis Star Tribune on July 14, 2013 analyzed the decisions women make about changing their names after getting married.  (You can read  “The Modern Way for Women to Create a Married Name,” if they keep the article online.)  Reporter Nara Schoenberg writes that 25% of married women take their husband’s last name but make their maiden name their legal middle name.  Very few women in history followed this practice, but there were some notable ones, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The women’s movement in the 1970s made it a bit more common (Hilary Rodham Clinton is mentioned), but hyphenated last names were more popular in the ’80s and ’90s.  The current statistic of 25% of women keeping their maiden name as a middle name along with their husband’s last name is a marked rise. Continue reading

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