On Being an Invisible Mother
So much of what I do, as a mother, goes unseen. I plan our healthy meals and read the labels of everything I put in my shopping cart, to make sure our home stays toxin-free, and I mix our own cleaners and make note of when we’ll need to reorder those essential oils we...
On the Opinions of Others and Stepping Outside the Box
The other night, my husband and I watched Dead Poet’s Society, a movie I remember loving in high school. I loved it just as much this time around. It is a phenomenal movie with phenomenal writing and acting. But. It struck me differently this time around. I’m a parent...
A Meditation on Time: a Short Essay
My youngest son, who just turned 3, has been a little clingy lately, waking up with night terrors, begging to sleep with us. He follows me around the house like he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight, like he’s afraid to be alone. Something has frightened him—it’s...
On Joy: an Essay
Just a few days ago, I got a precious letter from a reader, thanking me for one of my essays. She found it because she was looking, because she’d just lost two babies, twins, and she needed some comfort. I have written many versions of this story, about the daughter...
On Being a Strong Woman: A Reflection
It is difficult being a strong woman. To have our opinions, which are not always the “right and proper” opinions, to assert these opinions, to be dismissed for them; to be passionate about the things we are passionate about; to step out into the wilderness that holds...
What Every Parent of Twins Needs to Survive
I don’t know if I’ve ever faced a harder challenge in my parenting years than raising twins. Maybe it’s because our twins came near the end of the line of boys and they see all their older brothers do, and they expect that life will be exactly like that for them....
On the Freedom of Speech: an Essay
All day long I’ve been checking comments and shaking my head and feeling distracted by this war happening online, on my space, so I didn’t get much work done. Many of the comments are kind, but too many of them are not. So I sit down to my computer and get ready to...
On Matilda and Belonging to Yourself: a Reflection
A few months ago, my boys and I finished reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda. I had never read it before, so I was just as excited to reach that magical hour of stories as my children were, to see what Matilda would do next. One of my boys’ favorite parts of the book was...
All the Things I Don’t Know: a Reflection
If you ever want to know how much you don’t know, just spend about a minute with a kid. Do you think there were rattlesnakes in the water? No. Water moccasins, maybe. Are they poisonous? Yes. Do they just bite you if you’re in the water, or do they have to have a...
The Conversations You Wish You Didn’t Have to Have
Tonight, over dinner, I had to talk to my boys about cancer. It’s been pressing on my mind all day—the text from my sister-in-law. A week ago my brother, who never goes to doctors, went to a doctor. He woke up with a black veil over his left eye. He was nauseated to...