Some learnings are like a quick slap in the face. They sting for a brief moment and are strong enough to remember for a while. I was home from college for a holiday weekend. We were at a family friend’s house and I was telling a story to Marie. The story is irrelevant but it included “my boyfriend”. Whoa! Marie interrupted to say “He does not belong to you. Never refer to people with ‘MY’, […]
There’s a wonderful advice columnist I follow by the name of Dan Savage. In his advice column and Podcast Dan responds to questions about relationships (some aren’t very PG – beware if that offends you) sent to him by his readers and listeners. One of the things I admire about Dan is his ability to boil down to simple terms the complex thoughts and emotional processes we all go through – processes that drive our […]
We are growing up in a time when it is good to be self-sufficient. It is expected to be self-sufficient. Two months after moving to a new suburb we got a puppy. (Little did I know how much work a puppy would be, but that’s a different story.) My middle schooler introduced me to a neighbor that also just got a puppy. had a fenced in backyard and I did not. Luckily, Dinah invited us […]
There was a nice phase in my life where six women – in roughly the same phase of life and parenting – would get together on a regular basis to do dinner. We talked, we laughed, we compared stories and troubles. One night Natasha shared that she and her husband have sex every night. The rest of us were totally surprised. We shared our average quantities per month. Then we spent a good deal of […]
My Aunt Maggie was a kindergartner teach for 33 years. While there are many hysterical stories from her and about her, she taught me something so simple and tremendously effective. When I was pregnant with my first child, Maggie explained that little kids have a hard time learning and accepting death. She made it through many situations by using the sentence “the person’s heart stopped.” Maggie explained that it gives the children a concrete answer […]
Imagine the scene… Wife: I have been up at 5am every morning to get to work on time after not sleeping more than 3 hours straight due to breastfeeding. I am exhausted. Would you please do something to help me? Husband: I can’t help you breastfeed Wife: That is not what I meant! Husband: Just tell me what you want! It took me about 4 years (ok 14 years) and hundreds of these ineffective conversations […]
It wasn’t until I started working with my sister about 10 years ago that I finally understood what she meant when she would say “it’s good enough” as she would use this phrase frequently. We were working on a project for a client. The solution was basic without a lot of bells and whistles. But, the client was very happy with it as it achieved the desired goals and outcomes. A new person joined the […]
It was a weekend when all my siblings were in town visiting. My daughter was about 3 years old at the time. She had long curly hair which was pulled back with a barrette with a BIG PINK BOW. She was so proud of it. She loved it as it was a gift from her grandmother. I did not share her feelings of adoration for this item. Being completely truthful, I would never have purchased this […]
I was about a year into my divorce journey and thought I’d be further along in my grieving process by that point. But my grief was coming out like a child with a balloon who is just letting little bits of air slip through the hole. I was sitting at her island in her kitchen creating a puddle of tears. Again. I said, “I feel like I am standing on the shore of this huge […]
We were moving to Skokie, where I really had no friends. I was fortunate to have the support of my husband’s family. We were deciding between two preschools for my son Ben. In the parking lot of the 2nd preschool, I saw a mother with 2 kids, who stopped to talk to me. She told me that this preschool was amazing and so different from the other. She told me of it’s warmth and how […]