I worry that granting myself grace will make me feel, or become, selfish. I cannot discern when to hold myself accountable versus when to cut myself slack. I do not know how to love myself in spite of my flaws. I don’t remember the exact words, but I will never forget how I felt as […]
I am a compulsive memorizer. I am terrified of making a mistake, ever. Tonight I fucked up dinner. I was trying to make tahdig, the Persian dish where the rice at the bottom of the pot crisps up into a golden-brown layer of deliciousness that can be sliced into wedges and devoured. Instead, I got […]
As long as I was engrossed in being an above and beyond parent, I didn’t have to face the uncomfortable state of my marriage. After an elaborately executed bedtime routine, my husband would come home to find me sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through our state’s Pre-Kindergarten book of standards, as I took notes […]
I never pushed myself, never set my sights high on the horizon, never took failure as a learning experience, but only as a warning to remove something from my purview. Is my 9-year-old son now doing the same thing? Certainly, one of the most peculiar parts of being a parent is watching the emerging idiosyncratic […]
Perfection is the archenemy of productivity and happiness. For many years, I wrote mostly in my head. I might spend an entire day or even a week formulating a single sentence, turning the words over in my mind like agates in a tumbler until they came out gleaming and smooth, ready at last to be committed to […]
