Kelly Burch

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Growing up, travel was a luxury that was simply out of reach, so I know firsthand that travel is a privilege that not everyone can enjoy.

“Then why are you so worried about the scale?” Why was I? I had finally let go of the scale as an indicator of my own health, but my inability to do the same when it came to my daughter was bringing up the same old feelings of inadequacy and frustration.

Someone yelled out a racist comment, and Trump said, “Hey, I can’t say it, but he can.”

“Her face is beautiful. Beautiful,” Tiegs said.

My husband brought home his first gun while I was at work. When I came in he pointed to it proudly, while I stood firmly on the other side of the room, looking at the firearm like it was an unpredictable animal that could spring up to bite me at any moment.

A family's day of celebration became a nation's day of mourning.

Parenting a toddler is invigorating, exhausting, dirty, and intense. But since I want my daughter to have cousins (or at least pseudo-cousins) one day, I can’t always share the truth about my tiny tyrant on social media, for fear that my friends and siblings would never reproduce. And because, sometimes, you just want to project the image that you're calm, cool, and collected.

While I would like to think that I paused for a minute or two to think about what it means to be American, I was mostly focused on looking forward to the fireworks show.
But all of that changed for me last year. Three weeks before the Fourth of July, my husband became a citizen of the United States.

“How many time have I asked you….” I say in frustration, and then it hits me. The real question I should be asking is how many times I’ve uttered that phrase.