Tag Archives: parenting
“When you’re stuck in a spiral, to change all aspects of the spin, you need only to change one thing.” — Christina Baldwin This is good to know, especially if you are mid-spin in your life right now. Most of us fall into this category, because life is change, and change involves chaos of some sort. Chaos always accompanies change; it is only a matter of to which degree. Accepting that chaos will always be present actually makes it easier…..
There are so many entry points for me to talk about what International Women’s Day means to me. — As a former single mother on welfare, I could talk about the wage gap, inadequate child care resources, unequal opportunities at various places of work, the poverty trap built into the welfare system and the way it disincentivizes people from trying to better their circumstances. — As a woman who has experienced sexual harassment at work, in dating situations and while…..
My mom died on January 27, 2020. Grief is a strange experience. Grief is also NOT linear. Even though she has been gone for three years, there are still memories of her that appear at random times, popping to the top of my consciousness like errant butterflies flitting across a garden full of flowers waving in the breeze. That’s her in the picture—the brunette nestled next to her dad. She was the elder of two “oops babies” that arrived when…..
Today is National Peanut Butter Day. Nut butters in general are excellent sources of protein and brain-friendly fats. I usually take a few Justin’s packets with me on flights just in case I’m delayed in an airport or on the tarmac. I’ve also created a nutritious and delicious toast topping that I keep in the refrigerator at all times. I make it in small batches, storing it in a plastic, half-cup-sized container so that it stays fresh and in it’s…..
What kind of cook are you? The “measure-y, by the book” sort or the stir, sniff and sample sort? For what it’s worth, I think that not only does each approach have merit, but there are certain times when it pays to err on the side of the extreme of either. When I was a little girl, I used to perch on a stool in my grandma’s kitchen and watch as she cooked dinner for us. My knees drawn up…..
The picture above is of me at approximately 29 years old. Two of my daughters are with me outside the daily newspaper where I worked—my oldest daughter is probably inside the building, chatting up the reporters in the newsroom. My youngest daughter recently posted it on her Instagram (she’s the baby in the picture). She is currently 29; her older sisters 30 and 34, respectively. What follows is a bit of introspection and work-in-progress exposition for my next book. I…..
The picture is of me and my younger brother at Thanksgiving in the early 1970s. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, we moved in with my grandmother after my mom and dad divorced. I had 24 cousins on my mom’s side, and so our Irish Catholic family usually had about 40 people gathered on the major holidays (our year revolved around the pivot points of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas). We had an Adult Table, populated by my aunts, uncles,…..
Pictured above is the V-Tech “laptop” that my oldest daughter used to bring with her when she’d join me at the newspaper while I was working on deadline. Trips to newspaper offices were part of her entire life, almost from the moment she was born. I pursued a journalism degree at a community college, beginning when she was four months old. My first role at the college newspaper was as a features writer. Two semesters later, I would serve as…..
When you factor in all of the social expectations of motherhood, types of motherhood, women who have lost children due to miscarriage or other reasons, and those women who do not wish to have children (and who are sometimes made to feel “less than” for that choice), Mother’s Day can represent an emotional series of land mines. In one of the first pictures taken of me at the hospital, you can see my mother: a 22-year-old woman, peering into a…..
Early on, when I first established a nonprofit to provide cars to women in transition, I had an opportunity to explain a central tenet of the organization. One of our first recipients was a single mother of seven children. She was 29 years old. The only reason I mention these statistics (especially as it relates to the quantity of her children) is because these facts about her circumstances were used by some as a cudgel against her and given as…..