Parenting is not a competitive sport. If you need to win, we will all pay an inestimable price. When asked, “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I might give any of the following answers: only child, oldest of three, or oldest of five. All true. This is what it means to be a […]
No matter how badly you hurt me, I still can’t seem to forget you. It’s been six years and three months since I heard your voice. It feels like a lifetime ago. My heart still has a gaping hole in it from your absence. You missed so much of my life. My son is 7 […]
Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana: My husband of five years recently rekindled a relationship with his 21-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. […]
For those of us lucky enough to have the engaged kind, the ever-present kind, sometimes the step-parent label, so wrapped in stereotype and qualification, doesn’t quite fit. I am turning 27 next week and my Facebook feed is predictably overflowing with engagement rings, bridal white, and blurry sonograms. While some friends prepare to take on […]
My husband and I both brought children from previous relationships to our marriage. So we’re often stuck with labels like “blended,” “non-traditional,” and “step family.” But none of those is accurate. A Saturday morning in our house is filled with a standard dose of workweek exhaustion paired with weekend elation and the rowdy rumblings of three […]
This originally appeared on Fem2.0. Republished here with permission. I’m no person’s mom, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a loving and influential adult. By the time I was 12, I knew I didn’t want children. I loved kids, I saw the joy they brought into people’s lives, but I just didn’t feel the […]
