He changed his mind almost daily, all the way up to the kickoff match. 

Even before the first touch of the ball, he could barely contain his excitement. He was somewhere between the edge of his seat and a full Shakira dance routine.

This summer, the 2026 FIFA World Cup comes to North America.

For the first time, the tournament will be hosted by three countries—Canada, Mexico, and the United States. For many Americans, it will be their first chance to witness World Cup culture in person.

And the twelve-year-old who once rolled his eyes at my soccer questions is spending the summer as a Production Quality Control Intern with Men in Blazers Media Network, reviewing podcasts behind the scenes to help tell the stories behind the sport he loves.

(For the record, he still rolls his eyes at my questions.)

It feels like one minute I was driving to practice, getting tutorials on offside rules. The next, my child was helping cover the biggest sporting event in the world.

Flipping through old blog posts on soccer, I realized most of them weren’t really about the sport.

The real story was always about connection.

During the 2014 World Cup, more than thirty text messages bounced back and forth between Rochester and our friends in Granada, Spain with colorful commentary about a single match.

“Look at his haircut.”

“Good to know some players would do well on the swim team.”

The game connected us, but so did the conversation.

A few weeks later, our Spanish friends arrived in Rochester with eleven young soccer players from Granada.

The boys didn’t share much language, but it hardly mattered.

Between Google Translate, a soccer ball, and a willingness to laugh at mistakes, they figured it out.

I remember one exchange in particular.

“You want finish watching the game? Or play mini soccer?”

The answer was obvious.

The following year, several local families traveled to Granada together while our boys trained with the youth academy there.

I remember hearing “¡Aquí! ¡Aquí!” shouted repeatedly during practice.

Here. Here.

The coaches emphasized keeping the ball, protecting the ball, moving into space, and playing with confidence. The language was different, but the game felt familiar.

Outside the training grounds, we wandered narrow streets, shared tapas, watched flamenco, and visited an olive farm in the Andalusian countryside. The boys complained about having to sit through classes at a Spanish secondary school, while the adults were fascinated by everything.

Soccer opened doors far beyond the pitch.

It led to travel, friendship, and the chance to experience another culture firsthand. For five teenage boys immersed in fútbol, it was everything.

What stayed with me wasn’t a particular match or drill.

It was the realization that soccer was creating opportunities for all of us to see the world a little differently.

Football has a way of shortening distances.

Between countries.

Between languages.

Between generations.

Back in 2014, I thought I was writing about World Cup soccer.

Looking back, I was writing about a boy making memories, sharing experiences, paying attention, asking questions, and finding common ground.

And a game that once felt like a summer obsession became part of a much larger story.

Somehow, between then and now, that boy grew up.

The game is still the same.

The story keeps unfolding.

P.S. If you’re new to the tournament, one of the best resources is Men in Blazers (100% biased!). Their coverage feels more like storytelling than sports analysis, with a focus on culture, history, travel, and the people who make the game meaningful. Their World Cup city guides are worth exploring, even if you’re only casually curious about soccer.

The post Twelve Years Later: What World Cup and Soccer Has Me Thinking About appeared first on Kristine Bruneau.

Springsteen had fame and had just come off a successful tour promoting The River (1980).

He wanted to do something different with his next album. At the same time, he was wrestling with memories of his father and trying to make sense of a relationship that never fit neatly into hero or villain.

Did I like it? Rob asked me.

Yes.

It was restrained. Slow simmering. Observant. It revealed his fraught relationship with his father through quiet observations — the micro traumas.

Not explosive moments. Smaller ones.

The film softens things without erasing them, so you can keep moving forward.

It’s human. Messy. Raw.

An acknowledgment of what people can and cannot give each other.

Maybe that’s why it felt familiar.

What stayed with me afterward wasn’t a single scene. It was the accumulation of small moments.

Around the same time, I was listening to an episode of The Afternoon Shift about burnout and the cumulative effect of stress. One idea stuck with me from guest Amy Campbell: nothing has to be huge. The little “t’s” add up.

Eventually, you reach a point where pushing through no longer works.

Springsteen reaches that point in the film. He turns to his manager. Later, a therapist asks him a question about his childhood, and the emotions he’s been carrying finally break through.

At the end of the film, Springsteen’s father tells him:

“I’m proud of you. I know I wasn’t always good to you.”

And Bruce responds:

“You did the best you could.”

I had tears in my eyes.

So poignant.

Recognition.
Regret.
Late reconciliation that doesn’t erase the past.

Springsteen knew he had something with Nebraska. He wanted to preserve the raw feeling of the songs — gritty, imperfect, human.

I’m glad he trusted the recording.

Sometimes the raw edges are the point.

The post Sometimes the Raw Edges Are the Point appeared first on Kristine Bruneau.

I remember how nervous and excited I was to share it out loud.

At the time, I had already been writing about motherhood and blogging regularly here. I was working on a book, trying to understand what it meant to tell the truth about ordinary life in a way that might connect with others. The story I chose centered on infertility, highlighting the quiet consuming experience of trying to grow a family beyond the child I already had.

It took me over a year to get pregnant with my son, but I didn’t think much of it then. Later, trying to conceive became different. More complicated. More clinical. More emotionally tangled.

The essay was about all the things I tried in the hope that my body would cooperate. Appointments. Tracking. Waiting. Bargaining with myself. And eventually it became about stopping. I had reached a point where it no longer felt right in my body or spirit, even if I couldn’t fully explain why.

What Motherhood Taught Me About Storytelling

Looking back, I think that experience was one of the first real sparks that taught me to trust myself.

Not loudly. Not dramatically.

Just quietly, in the way motherhood often teaches us things.

There is so much invisible work in parenting. So much emotional labor that never announces itself as labor at all. You carry worry, hope, guilt, love, exhaustion, fear, gratitude–sometimes all in the same hour. And often you carry it silently.

That’s partly why storytelling matters to me.

Not because every story needs to be shared publicly. It doesn’t. Some experiences belong only to us. But when people do choose to speak honestly about their lives, it creates something important. A kind of recognition. A reminder that someone else has stood in their shoes and survived.

Sometimes hearing words out loud loosens the grip of shame or loneliness.

And loneliness, if you stay in it too long, can convince you that you’re the only one struggling.

Over the years, I’ve realized infertility was not the only difficult chapter in motherhood for me. There have been many others.

Parenting shifts and changes shape as your children grow, and so do you. But what has stayed consistent is how deeply moved I am by the women and men willing to tell the truth about their lives– not polished truths, but real ones. The complicated ones. The funny ones. The painful and contradictory ones.

I see pieces of myself in those stories.

This Saturday, a new group will step on stage at Hochstein School for this year’s Listen to Your Mother. They’ll share their motherhood stories that make people laugh, cry, reflect, and remember.

And that’s the beauty of it.

You don’t have to be a mother to sit in the audience and feel something shift inside you. These stories are about relationships, identity, family, loss, resilience, love, and memory. They’re about being human. About paying attention to the lives we’re living while we’re inside them.

If you go (or watch the livestream), let yourself stay present.

Listen closely.

Let yourself feel whatever arises.

We spend so much time pulling ourselves apart and comparing ourselves to everyone else. Spaces like this remind us to do the opposite. To witness each other more carefully. To build each other up instead of tearing each other down.

Eleven years later, I am grateful I said yes to sharing my motherhood story. And even more grateful that others are still gathering to tell theirs.

The post Motherhood and Storytelling appeared first on Kristine Bruneau.