Cassie's Nimble Nuggets

I want to talk to you about one of the hardest things your daughters will deal with.  Petty social environments.  I remember once someone was hurting my daughter socially and being a momma bear, I wanted to go into Defcon 5 mode.  I think every mom has been there, we have felt the hurt of social aggression, especially if we have daughters.   I had felt social agression when I was growing up, but it wasn't until I was in women's ministry that I heard the term social aggression.  What is Social Aggression?   Social aggression is a form of antisocial behavior ( Burt et al., 2012 ) in which social relationships and social status are used to damage reputations and inflict emotional harm on others, and centers on behaviors such as gossiping, ostracism, and threatening to end a friendship. If your a mom of girls, it sounds like every single middle school experience right?  That would be because this is the number one issue girls have.  Where boys have physical aggression, girls use so

My children are in the most dreaded season of their lives: Middle School and High School.  It's hard, it's volatile, and it emotionally exhausting for everyone involved. Many moms struggle with middle school. One reason can be that they never dealt the pain of their middle school experience, we have moms reliving the trauma of middle school, and children trying to survive it. It can turn into a mess and our children can feel isolated and alone or disengaged. I want to help you, help them survive middle school.  I have two daughters and one is a freshman in highschool, the other is a sixth grader and I can tell you I was not prepared for girls in middle school and my eldest barely survived it.  I have moms who ask me how to survive it and this whole series is my take on what you can do to help you kids survive middle school. There are three questions I ask my girls everyday when they get in the car.  1. How was your day? 2. Who did you sit with at lunch? 3. Who is dead to us?  T

My mom had a sign in her office that was a black and white word document with this quote:  Life is 10% what happens to you 90 % how you react to it. M y mom always had reminders on her walls at work. I thought she had it together and she was so wise when I was in middle school, looking back I see now that she needed that reminder as much as I do at times. We teach every generation what they could be, but rarely ever tell them how to live well here. How do we continue to live when we have a loss that punches you in the gut every single night. A basement level fear that came true, a tough situation at work that you can't shake, and the list could go on and on. We do not know, or ever, have control over some things. I have struggled to respond rather than react.   I teach my children the endless possibilities their life offers. But also, how to live in a world that is broken, fallen, full of heartache, and pain. Many seasons in our lives are endurance seasons, so how do we build end

There is no harder job than public service in any capacity, but especially the healthcare profession.  As a nurse, I live in a problematic place daily.  In my position, I am in between management, government, doctors, patients, and families.   I live in the middle of every single statute, and here is where I have to serve people and bring them excellent care.  It is so easy to lose yourself in the demands that everyone is making on you, to lose your identity in trying to please every single power that is telling you what you can and can't do, but I have learned how to shift my perspective in the midst of every single power telling me what I have to do.  I am still Cassie as I follow JHACO policies, I am still Cassie as I am filling out government-mandated documentation, I am still Cassie when I am meeting my management productivity standards, and I am still Cassie when I am dealing with patients and families.  Who I am does not change because my who isn't defined by my do.  

So I made my eldest daughter cry this week. I picked them up from Gymnastics and when they got in the car my eldest daughter verbalized her frustrations.  "Mom Gina yelled at me tonight because I wasn't doing my turns right."  Now, I am her mother and I should have responded differently but I said: "Good I am glad because that means she is pushing you."  I felt the death glare coming from the back seat and she continued to share her frustrations with and I continued to say that it was a good thing.   The problem was she was tired, eleven, and didn't have the tools in her emotional toolbox to hear what I was saying and so we hugged I told her I loved her and she went to bed.  The next day I apologized to her and tried to again explain to her that I didn't want to see her comfortable and get stagnant.  Growth involves struggle, work, pressure, and sometimes pain.  When you are comfortable you stop growing.   We don't allow that to dull our senses or

There was a commercial that was popular by JG Wentworth.  The slogan was: It's my money, and I need it now! Typically it was a person yelling this out a window proclaiming that it was their money.   I was in the generation that computers were introduced in mass numbers in school.  The typing class was a must. We learned how to find information on the web rather than in the library.  We learned that we were smarter than our predecessors, we learned there was a faster way, and that life didn't have to be hard.  It was exciting to be a part of the dot com era, we didn't have to wait the way our parents did, we could have things instantly at our fingertips.  It gave us almost a false sense of entitlement and security that life was going to be easy.   Is it any wonder that we struggle with waiting?  I have struggled with the dissonance of where I am and where I think I should be. Add into that my belief in Christ and God's Kingdom and sometimes I can get confused about the