Let’s get one thing straight: art is a skill. It’s not a talent. Yes, some people have a more natural aptitude for certain things. However, all talents need practice to become skills. Painting, playing an instrument, dancing, sketching…they’re all learned skills . I never painted or drew a thing until just a few years ago. When I decided to get sober, I found lots of comfort in focusing on such a meditative hobby. When our beloved Siberian forest cat died in the fall of 2022,

I’m trying not to be one of those “back in my day” dads, but sometimes the differences are so stark I can’t help myself. Except this “back in my day” was sharing one of my favorite movies with my kids. My kids are rapidly changing from little kids to big kids/teenagers. They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and this is as true for parenting kids as it is for anything else. Having been a dysfunctionally functional alcoholic parent for the first 8 years of th