Articles by Amy Shankland


Surviving the awkward years

By AMY SHANKLAND Perfectly Imperfect The topic of my adoption didn’t come up very often between my parents and me after that revealing Sunday. I do remember being a preteen…


A difficult conversation

By AMY SHANKLAND Perfectly Imperfect Thank you for the wonderful comments from last week. My adoption and reunion story will be slowly revealed every Friday, just like a television program…


Learning the hard way

By AMY SHANKLAND Perfectly Imperfect I was so touched at the response from last week’s column as I introduced my adoption and reunion story. Troy Dunn himself left a comment…


An adoption & reunion journey

By AMY SHANKLAND Perfectly Imperfect As I shared last week, this column is going in some new directions, one of which will be my adoption and reunion story. I wasn’t…


Odds & ends

By AMY SHANKLAND Perfectly Imperfect I think most newspaper columnists like to have one of these “odds and ends” columns – where we just share brief, multiple stories. Today is…


Moving on

By AMY SHANKLAND Sandwiched Two weeks ago, I was taking clothes out of the dryer and hanging them up or folding them. I began to hum a song that had…


To my siblings and friends

By AMY SHANKLAND Sandwiched To My Siblings, Losing our mother has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever faced in my life. But Mark and Vicky, having you both…


Hope and happiness

By AMY SHANKLAND Sandwiched It’s been three weeks since my mom’s funeral, and I’m surprised that most of my memories of the day are happy ones. This was completely unexpected,…