Archive

I grew up in a tiny house that was always filled with people. I mean not an extreme tiny house where you build your home inside an old bus or a chimney or trash bin, but a home with small rooms and a kitchen – wait for it – without an island (gasp!). So, not […]

I haven’t seen my teenage daughter in three and a half months. This was my choice.  I sent her to live with her biological father because we were stuck in what seemed to be a broken and abusive dynamic, and I wanted it to change and I wanted to heal. For me, at this time, […]

Three years ago (perhaps not so coincidentally after the 2016 elections in the United States) my family decided on an international move.  The time was right as we felt our home country was becoming more hostile, more racist, and decidedly less like a place where we wanted our children to grow into adults. So, I […]

Marriages are not working. They are, for the most part, broken. Half of all marriages end in divorce.  Marriages need an expiration date.  I can only speak to marriages in the United States, because that is what I am familiar with. But, I can certainly speak to that. Now, I am not bragging or anything, […]

I am developing curriculum for a class on intimacy and relationships and I tried out one of the pieces with my students at school this week. If I was going to talk about developing deep and rich friendships, I thought we first needed to unpack some of our baggage.  So I start my first lesson […]

Sometimes it is hard to remember that you actually get to select the things you care about. There are a lot of causes to rally behind; a lot of traditions to follow; a lot of people who think “there is only one right way to do things” – and you are not obligated to care about […]

I have a cousin named Chickie.  Don’t judge.  When you have Irish and Italian families, everyone is named Mary or Maria and at some point, to disambiguate, you need to get funky with the names.  Anyhoo, I spent a lot of years really mad at Chickie.  Like almost 20. I spent almost 20 years angry […]

Two years ago I had a stroke and last week I had an episode where I lost consciousness, fell, and did some damage to myself upon landing.  I have lost consciousness and fallen about five times since the stroke, and have come very close to losing consciousness (but able to sit down and recover before […]

In 2014, I wrote a piece called Walk With Grace and Other Shit to Say to Your Kids.  It was a list of phrases my husband and I use in situations that can sometimes leave you frazzled.  My husband and I say these phrases because we have thought about them.  They reflect a message we […]

I have seen a number of articles recently claiming that when boys tease and become physically aggressive with girls, it is because the boy likely has a crush on the girl.  These articles say that we are setting girls up to equate love with abuse. We are romanticizing these interactions and victim-blaming the girl in […]