Continuing the Conversation: Penny and Black Lives Matter
In this week’s podcast, I interviewed all three of our kids about their experiences over the past few years of reading diverse books, traveling to museums and historic sites in Civil…
Continuing the Conversation: William and Growing Up to Be a White Man
In this week’s podcast, I interviewed all three of our kids about their experiences over the past few years of reading diverse books, traveling to museums and historic sites in Civil…
S3 Bonus | Talking with Our Kids About Race, Justice, Love, and Privilege
How do we talk with kids about race, justice, and privilege? In this follow up to last week’s interview with Patricia Raybon, Amy Julia interviews her three children. Penny, William,…
Five Next Steps Toward Racial Healing
I resisted offering “action items” for white people (like me) who wanted to DO something about injustice and inequity in our nation for a long time. I didn’t want to…
Chapter 4: Prayer
When I was deciding what chapters to record for this Reading Small Talk podcast, I skimmed through the whole book. But when I got to the chapter on Prayer, I…
The Ordinary Goodness of a Life with Down Syndrome, Even Now
Our daughter Penny is 14. She loves Taylor Swift and Fuller House and the Yankees. She betrays many signs of becoming a typical teenager: she groans when I wake her…
Hope and the Spiritual Imagination
“I suspect every pregnant woman imagines a hypothetical life for her child. And every pregnant woman knows that child’s life won’t work out exactly as she imagined it. Life will…
Chapter 3: Beauty
It was over a decade ago—a few months after William was born—that I caught a glimpse of my body in a full-length mirror and worried about what I saw. …
Happy Mother’s Day!
So today, on Mother's Day, can you imagine getting really mad, maybe not for a terrific reason, and yelling at your kids and slamming a door and stomping around the…
Reading Small Talk: Behind-the-Scenes
Want a glimpse of Small Talk behind-the-scenes? How do my kids REALLY feel about being stuck at home with our family?! What do they think I am having a hard…
