Living naturally, most of the time.
Am I the only one who doesn’t find the efforts of everyone else’s children on Mother’s Day heartwarming? Not gonna happen around these parts, I think. It’s not like I’ve never gotten any appreciation from my children. For the most part they’re good kids. But celebrations are not something we’ve ever done well. And now…
Just as some food allergies can cause delayed reactions that are hard to place, so are all the weirdnesses caused by sheltering in place wreaking havoc on my children’s emotions and their abilities to self-regulate. Take today, for example, when my 9-year-old smashed her iPad down onto the dining table at 10:13 a.m., shattering her…
Less than a week into mass social distancing in response to the novel coronavirus, the Indigo Girls spent 90 minutes the evening of March 19 singing and telling stories to viewers in a generous online concert that brought together many of the people who would no longer be able to see the duo in person…
Although much has changed since this summer-fall recap post was originally written in December 2019, I’m backdating the post upon belated publication to reflect my reality at that time. —— When I look back on past Novembers when I did NaPoWriMo – National Poetry Writing Month – I love knowing that I found joy in…
Before the long days of summer parenting melt my brain, I want to capture some of the good that happened this spring. I wrote in late April about what life looked like in the first two months of my separation from my husband. Daily journaling for myself has become very important, but time capsules captured…
I’m pleased to be a featured reader at the first EcoAction Author Night on May 21 in Arlington, Virginia. EcoAction Arlington, the event organizer, was formerly known as Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment (ACE). The organization celebrated 40 years last fall! I’m honored to be reading with Tara Campbell, author of TreeVolution, from which she…
It’s been two and a half months since my husband and I separated and I moved into a nearby townhouse. After my initial sharing and the kind replies of support I received, I’ve since had a handful of “how are you doing?” questions. A few – most of the ones in person – have been…
I’m wrong a lot. Sometimes my first instincts against something turn out to be limiting beliefs and my reluctant Yes – to a person, to an event, to an opportunity – was a game-changer, something I can’t imagine not having in my life. Other times, my Yes to something that seems like a natural fit…
After BlogHer Health, I did lots of thinking about purpose and passion, about time and transition, about mothering and more. The month of January stretched wide, like the mouth of an animal whose jaws seem to magically open to the horizon. I began using The Best Part of My Day Healing Journal and began understanding how…
BlogHer18 Health, the first health-focused conference produced by BlogHer and SheKnows Media, was a terrific two days full of inspiring speakers, education and connection. To say that I’m glad I went is a profound understatement! It was terrific to be in a space with a shared language of health and wellness being spoken everywhere! I loved it! More…
Five years ago, in January 2013, shortly before I was to turn 40, I experienced something of a seismic shift from which I’m still feeling aftershocks. In the space of just a few weeks, I had the opportunity to interview three amazing people and be present to the same message told from three different perspectives:…
It was a year ago that I got clear just how profoundly my brother’s suicide nearly 30 years earlier had affected my life. I’d started to think about its impact on my health when I read Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s The Last Best Cure in 2013 and, in July 2015, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Biology…
Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a post called “Why I feel better” that detailed my supplement regimen and other healing protocols that I thought were helping with my physical and emotional/mental health. I’ve been feeling of late like doing another documenting, given that I feel like I’m made some significant improvements in the…
If I had to draw a picture of the past few months, it would be something like a tornado, all swirly and intense with flecks of debris scattered throughout. Edited to add: Curiously, the day after I originally published this post, I found I had accidentally taken a fuzzy swirling photo of my foot during…
The first two weeks of May have been packed. The month started with a Clean Air Awareness event I helped to organize. It was successful and I hope will lead to more awareness about clean air habits, especially people turning off their cars while parked at school. That drives me crazy! The event went well…
I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be part of this year’s Listen to Your Mother DC cast! If you haven’t ever attended a LTYM performance, make this your year! It is, in fact, the final year of the program as it’s been done around the country with original stories in each city. It’s going to instead become a…
The National Geographic special issue on Gender and the Gender Revolution documentary that airs this month could not have come at a better time. I was thrilled to get to see the documentary last week at a pre-release screening at Nat Geo headquarters here in DC. My post on The DC Moms goes into more detail…
I’m pleased to announce that I have work appearing in two new anthologies! Abundant Grace is an anthology of fiction by DC-area women writers. It was published in November 2016 by Paycock Press. My story, “Out of Scale,” comes from the novel I am writing. The story of my 2006 c-section birth appears in a new anthology, Birth…
My lawn and I have a lot in common. We both have struggled over the past several years, and we both require a lot of maintenance to thrive. When we first moved into this home that we fully renovated on the inside, there was no lawn. There were dozens – hundreds? – of baby oak…
When I was halfway through my first pregnancy, I found myself startled to realize that I would be giving birth to a white male. After all the time I had spent teaching about race, gender and class privilege, I wondered how I could ensure that my son wouldn’t grow up feeling entitled. Last spring, as…
