Dianna Buchwalter

  “Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?”   Stevie Nicks wrote these lyrics in 1973. I have listened to Landslide more times than I can count, and each time it hits right in the gut. It’s a song about change. About fear, love, aging, and the quiet questions we all carry as life keeps moving forward.   As   I listened again recently, with the end of another year approaching, I found myself reflecting on the last twelve months. This has been a year! I’m not even sure what adjective fits best. Crazy maybe. Long. Unexpected.   Sometimes life throws so many curveballs at such an accelerated speed, all you can do is try to keep up so they don’t knock you down.   2025 has been filled with a plethora of lessons in love, humility , fear, doubt, grief, and joy. They didn’t all come easy. But then again, we were never promised easy.   In fa...

  It’s two days before Christmas, and the house is currently empty, so I took advantage of the quiet moments and began reading Be Safe, Love Mom this morning. The book is written by a mom of four whose children serve in different U.S. military branches. It was a recommended read by a mom who has long been on this journey that we are soon approaching. From an early age, I knew my son wouldn’t go down the college route. Jeremy despised school. There were many parent-teacher conferences in those early years, and most teachers commented that Jeremy was too impulsive, un-focused, and disruptive to the class but had a heart of gold. I remember saying, “if I can just get him to graduate high school.” That’s how those thoughts ended for me, as I wasn’t sure what would come next for him. There wasn’t an urgency to have anything figured out back then, as time was on our side. As he matured, his character proved to be one I am very proud of. We often talked about the military as he grew, and...

"Great, here they come again." I thought to myself. I pretended to search for something in my locker as the most popular girl and her entourage brushed by me with their matching New Kids on the Block t-shirts. I wanted so badly to walk alongside them and talk about which member of the boy band was the cutest. I longed for their small frames, flawless skin and perfectly teased hair. Feelings of inferiority seemed to be the norm for me back in the day. It is said that Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr first recorded the expression "the more things change, the more they stay the same." There's so much truth in that statement. Here I am at the ripe age of 41 years old and as I recall those glorious junior high days, it's the early 90's and I am 13 all over again. If I'm not careful, there are situations that arise where I can let myself believe those same voices in my head now just as I did then. For instance: Have you ever walked into church on a Sunday morni...