Every so often, my mom will describe someone in the family as "Hurst-y", and I've gathered over the years that our Hurst line can be thanked for the artistic, nosy, pedantic, and slightly eccentric tendencies that run through our veins. While my great-grandmother may have traded in her Hurst name...

A piece of my heart is planted in Washington. I was born and raised in the Upper Left, and despite living as far away from it as the continental U.S. allows, I still feel the pull of the Columbia River, the Cascade Mountains, and the smell of a cherry blossom spring. The land up there is special....

Winter has fully settled into my garden. The stalks are brown, and the ones that aren’t crisp are slowly turning into leaf mold on the ground. Each time I pass up my front steps I can feel the crinkled marigolds looking at me, reminding me that despite its drab appearance, the garden is far from ...

You'll hear me use the term "nuanced" Latter-day Saint a lot around here. It's a term I started seeing in online circles and the more I learned about it, the more it resonated with me. But many people are probably wondering...what is it? As with all questions, you'll get different answers from di...

I didn't eat my own wedding cake. I had a food fight with it in the street the night before my wedding. The cake was horrendous...I had made it myself and gotten a little too zealous with the rose water, so my friends and I had one last hurrah to celebrate. What else is a Mormon girl going to do ...

You are a different person today than you were yesterday. Do you know this version of you? Or is she a stranger that you're afraid to meet? What would it be like to open your arms to her and love her just as she is? Faith is no stranger to evolution, even when we want it to be. It's comforting to...