Learning To Love Myself

Last week, I finished a major novel revision. The kind of revision that takes 6 months to complete. This is far from the end of the process, but still, it’s a big milestone, and one I’ve been working toward with increasing intensity as the months have passed and it took so.much.longer than I wanted it…

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the thick of it

One of my mantras over the past sixteen years of motherhood has been “This is the season of life I am in right now.” It’s a simple mantra—a recognition that what I’m experiencing is not permanent. (As an aside: sixteen years? How did that happen?) When things started to reopen this spring, I felt suffocated…

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Why, Hello, Summer.

It seems that lately, most of the people I talk to about summer plans say, “We have no plans. We go to the pool every day!” Speaking for myself, I might not mind going to the pool every day under two conditions: 1) the water is warm; 2) there’s plenty of shade. But since those…

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You say Self”ish”, I Say Self”less”

I’ll admit it: I totally blew it last summer. I tried to extend my “work-year” to ten months by putting kids in summer school, promising myself that it would be enough to do weekly field trips during July and August. But the first ten days of July were taken up with our triple-duty trip to…

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Love Is A Tug of War

There are days when I look at the words (or the notes) I’ve put put on the page and I’m in awe, where I literally think, “Where did this come from?” And yet it’s just as likely that by the end of the day I’ll thoroughly convinced no publisher will ever accept such drivel, and…

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Searching For A New Balance On The Cusp of A New School Year

The summer of 2015, in our family, breaks down like this: Phase 1 (up to July 4): Baseball and summer school. Phase 2 (July 4-Aug. 17): Major travel and recovery. The past several years I’ve structured the summer around weekly field trips, but this year we didn’t do a single one. Even now I’m not…

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