What is Gray Colored Glasses? I’m so glad you asked. In short, it’s a parenting blog. But it’s so much more than that.
Gray Colored Glasses takes its name from my son’s first pair of glasses and a critique of the “rose colored glasses” view of the world. It is my commitment as a mom of two kids, one with special needs, to reframing beauty in truth-telling, without discounting life’s very real challenges. It’s a blog for any parent–and really any person–seeking to live with deeper understanding, more awareness, and more compassion. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I think there are a lot of us out there.
What’s in a name?
The name came to me in the wind. I was on the patio at a local restaurant, sitting with my iPad and my thoughts, trying to put a name on the past few years of our life. I have long known that storytelling is powerful, and I was looking for a way to frame my story that could convey its complexity without casting too positive or negative a light. If it was going to resonate—even for me—it had to be honest.
I was thinking about the challenges we’ve faced almost daily since our son was born, the heartache and celebration all tangled together, Isaac’s little face…and his gray colored glasses.
And there it was.
A parenting blog with a mission
It’s probably some of what you’re thinking…maybe with a bit of a twist.
Gray Colored Glasses is a contrast to rose colored glasses, though not its polar opposite. Gloom and pessimism could never do justice to the fullness and love in our life.
Gray Colored Glasses is an honest outlook, a sober review, one that acknowledges struggle and searches for a deeper kind of beauty.
It is a belief that black and white rarely serve us and that gray is not just dull or dim, but a surprisingly nuanced color.
It is my ongoing attempt to embrace our life in all of its wild variety–obstacles and triumphs–and call it good.
An invitation
Gray Colored Glasses isn’t just about my son, but about all of the ways our life has taken shape, largely because of him: the way we parent (check out Nurtured Heart Approach), the way we eat (here’s one example), the sometimes laughable twists and turns of every day (see Lessons from an Impromptu Art Show). Gray Colored Glasses is a parenting blog and so much more. It is a window into our home, and sometimes, my soul.
Isaac has moved on now to brown tortoise frames. He’s grown considerably since Gray Colored Glasses first began to percolate. Everyone in our family of four has. And I suppose that’s part of it, knowing that very little in this life is permanent. It is what we make of it, how we frame it, what we choose to see.
The stories we tell matter. I hope my stories will matter to you. And I hope you will join me in embracing this kind of honest, reflective, and ultimately hopeful point of view in the stories you share in the world. I believe we need it, perhaps now more than ever.
