Introverts have it rough around the holidays, so Lynn Beisner offers a survival guide for all the over-stimulating festivities and family gatherings. If you hate the company Christmas party or the big family Thanksgiving dinner, you are not necessarily a bad person. You may just be an introvert, which likely means that you are drained, […]
In an ideal world, your kids would come to you before they have sex, but that’s unlikely. So you may have to beat them to the punch. A common question I hear parents asking is how to give their teenage children access to birth control even if they do not want them having sex yet. […]
In a letter to her future great-grandchildren, Lynn Beisner recalls the day she and the nation made history by voting the first black President into office. To my dear great-grandchildren, I don’t know what stories have filtered down to you. I imagine they’re stories of my sometimes outrageous feistiness or of my unorthodox way of […]
Because we, as a nation, have made the wrong political choices, the Christian Right believes God is now punishing us, says Lynn Beisner. There were two things I knew for sure when I read the forecasts for Hurricane Sandy: First, my elderly dog would insist on being let outside to pee even if the winds […]
Lynn Beisner explains the religious—albeit ridiculous—thought process behind Richard Mourdock’s recent rape comments. Over the last couple of months, we have heard a lot from conservative men about rape. Their words have been shocking and outrageous for most people. But for me, it is nothing more than a bad family reunion. This is what I […]
When someone you admire criticizes your parenting, what should you do? One of the first things we learn as a parents is that everyone has an opinion on how we do or have done our job as parents, and almost everyone, from our friends to strangers in a grocery store, feels free to express that […]
Lynn Beisner offers her take on Mitt Romney’s ridiculous “binders full of women” comment in last night’s debate. Affirmative action has an unlikely new advocate: Mitt Romney. Granted, I am not sure that he realized he was advocating for affirmative action during last night’s debate, but he did a better job than most professors of […]
How do you gain your children’s trust from an authoritarian parenting perch? Imagine the Gilmore Girls, if Rory had a brother and Lorelei was actually married to Luke. That is sort of our family. We all genuinely like each other’s company. Our conversations are often fast-paced banter that mixes information about our lives with humorous […]
Lynn Beisner describes the harrowing internal debate over whether or not to report her 14-year-old daughter’s grossly inappropriate encounter with a male friend. At the end of my daughter’s first year of high school, she asked to throw a party. She had really struggled that year, taking advanced placement classes with kids in their senior […]
Was Obama reacting to past trauma during his poor performance at last night’s Presidential debate? There have been many explanations offered for Obama’s poor performance last night, everything from overconfidence to altitude sickness. One of the most astute observations I have read about Obama’s demeanor last night came from Ann Lamont who in her Facebook […]
Lynn Beisner says eating and screwing is what has kept our species alive. Can’t those desires that were at one time life-preserving now be life-affirming? I love that my friends are more evolved than I am. One of the things that I especially love about my friends is that they believe in accepting people of all sizes and […]
When did the word “victim” become synonymous with “moral failure”? The longer the conversation about Mitt Romney’s 47% goes on, the more worried I become. I am concerned because embedded in Romney’s speech to millionaires is a dangerous premise that if left unchallenged will have serious consequences for all Americans, but especially for women. That […]
