The more I try to define the term, the more it slips from my grasp. It happened again. It happens about twice a year. I dreamt about the woman I was in love with a long time ago, a woman I now consider part of my inner circle, though we seldom talk, and I see […]
I’m not using religion to guide my son’s morals. He is not being raised to believe that God is keeping track of his behavior, nor are we relying on the promise or threat of heaven and hell, respectively, to keep him in line. Neuroscientist David Eagleman says this about religion: Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast […]
Every parent of an only child has a serious reason why that child won’t have siblings, whether that reason is biological, economical, or philosophical. Here is the story I want to tell you: I found a new primary care physician and went to her for symptoms—heart palpitations, anxiety, diminished sex drive, fatigue—and I asked if […]
Most days, it seems like at least one demand has to be missing for me to feel as if I’ve got everything under control. I need to talk to you about energy, and I may wax metaphysical at times, so bear with me. First of all, there are different kinds of energy required as it relates […]
What you call ‘helicopter parenting’ is just me helping my son learn how to be appropriate. Once people are done scrutinizing politicians and Kardashians, there appears to be nowhere left to level ill-conceived judgments but upon parents. We’re at the top of the list of people who earn—or in many cases, don’t earn—the derision, head-shaking, […]
I realize now that in my 20s and 30s there were times when I was beautiful. In my 40s, it seems like “inoffensive” is what I should shoot for. In my regular habit of over-thinking things, I’ve spent too much time considering why I care about the way I look. I wonder whether it is possible to view the physical […]
There is no way to compromise on an issue like this. As much as the census may claim that American families have one point something children per household, you can’t have half a baby. I’m 44, and I bled again this month at exactly 27 days—the calendar of my body, clockwork of my reproductive system, […]
I am where I am today—a happily married mother—because of all the decisions I’ve made in my life. And those decisions included two abortions. I have made no mistakes. Well, in retrospect—because how else should one determine a mistake—all the mistakes I have made, whether large or small, have brought me to where I am […]
