Posts Tagged: Parenting

DIARY

The Quietening

February 15, 2021

Read all my posts about divorce here.

On Valentine's Day afternoon, I took a nap with my kitten (pictured above having mixed feelings about this choice). I sat on a patio in the valley with my friend Margo, and ate some good sushi. I Facetimed with the kids, who were spending the weekend with their dad. I asked him to handle their Valentine's Day presents, and didn't beat myself up about opting out of this particular task. I fell asleep again only a few hours after I'd awoken from my nap, then woke up at 11PM, watched some bad TV, and went back to bed. Everything I did all day long - from the breakfast I ate to the midnight show that I watched - was my choice.

At some point during the day I posted this picture to Instagram, and thought about how happy I was when it was taken. I thought about what a difference a decade makes. I thought about how happy I am now...except I'm not even sure I'd call this feeling "happiness" - it's easier to define it as the absence of sadness. I think it's the kind of feeling I've spent my entire life both searching for and running away from.

DIARY

This Is How It Always Is

November 20, 2019

If we're being honest, I don't think it was my marriage that broke me. It was all the marriages.

I just finished reading this book, Fleishman Is In Trouble. It's about divorce - and specifically about a woman who, one day, simply disappears - abandons her marriage and her job and her children while her husband holds up the fort, so to speak. It involves major twists that I won't spoil for you because you really should read it - but I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you what I took away from it. Which is that this book explained my own story to me in a way I hadn't fully comprehended before.

At the crux of the issue is the plight of the working mother. I shy away from this topic because in our present culture there is such (completely valid) sensitivity to the different ways women approach parenting. There is a danger, when you identify yourself as a "working mother," of creating distance between yourself and the other kind of mother - the one who "doesn't work." But who does! Of course she does! She does the hardest job!

DIARY

The Weekday Parent

April 11, 2019

At my son's open house last night, we were given a checklist with the different projects on display, so we could make sure to see them all. There was a wall where the kids had written about their favorite part of first grade (my son wrote "getting to eat breakfast in school," because he has his priorities straight), and a wall displaying illustrated book reports of their favorite Dr. Seuss story. The last project on the checklist was "My Home." There were little spaces where the kids filled in various facts about their home - how many pets they have, that kind of thing.

In my home, there are 3 pets, my son wrote. There is 1 adult and 2 kids.

I scanned the other kids' projects, doing the now-familiar hunt for Another Divorced Person (I look for them everywhere - at drop-offs and playgrounds and amusement parks; they're not usually hard to spot). Two of his classmates had 6 people living in their home (4 adults and 2 kids). The majority of them had 4 (2 adults and 2 kids). But - national statistics be damned - nobody else had "1 adult."

DIARY

I Lost My Fallopian Tube From An Ectopic Pregnancy, And I Don’t Think I Had To

January 31, 2018

This is a sad post, so here is a happy picture.

Since I last posted about what I thought was a miscarriage, my medical situation has gotten pretty significantly worse, and even though right now I'm laying in bed with bandages all over my torso and can't really move, I wanted to write about this because for some reason doing so is functioning as a kind of in-real-time therapy for me. And also because I had no idea that what happened to me over the past week could happen, and it didn't have to, and I'd really like it to not happen to anyone else.

DIARY

Hugs

January 29, 2018

Here's a funny little byproduct of this site: when I write about something that falls on the "heavy" side of the spectrum (like, ohhhh, say, this), it's always strange trying to figure out how to transition back into more "normal" topics. Today, for example, the plan was to do an outfit post, because I haven't done one in forever, but I'm not sure how to go about that; typing up tips on how to wear a 3/4-sleeve jacket in the winter isn't something I feel like doing at the moment.

So I'm going to tell you about my socks instead. But first I'm going to tell you how I'm feeling, because it seems like at least a brief update is warranted.

DIARY

I Had A Miscarriage Yesterday

January 26, 2018

Just after my pregnancy was confirmed by a blood test.

If you follow me on Instagram, this is the photo you saw yesterday. But I wasn't sitting in a bath with a cocktail; I was sitting in a hospital bed, having a miscarriage from a pregnancy that I hadn't known was happening.

Anxiety

10 Things (Finally) Being Treated For Anxiety Taught Me

January 11, 2018

Being someone who has suffered from chronic anxiety for well over a decade and who is writing a humor book about anxiety is a bizarre experience. So much of what I've gone through has been decidedly less-than-funny, but now, as part of the writing process, I've been scrolling back through old posts I've written on the topic with a new perspective. I mean, I hallucinated tiny banana-shaped people sitting in my linen closet and telling me they could help me sleep. (True story.)

Come on. That's funny.

But re-reading these posts is doing something else: it's making me remember just how rough that (extremely long) time period was, because it's easy for me - a person who is now capable of sleeping through the night without bolting straight up in bed at 3AM, wide-awake and sobbing because DEATH IS REAL - to forget how out of control my life used to feel, because I simply couldn't rely on my own brain to do what I wanted it to do.

DIARY

72 Life Lessons For My 36th Birthday

May 26, 2017

I had this idea that today, on the day I turn 36, I'd do some reflecting, with the goal of coming up with 36 bits of wisdom I've accumulated over the years. I thought it'd be a good exercise, you know? And then I came up with an idea for how to make it even better.

So I reached out to my best girlfriends - my closest, most incredible circle of humans, who just so happen to also be some of the wisest people I know - and asked them to tell me what they've learned now that they're in their 30s, so I can spend the next 36 years learning from them.

Here are 72 life lessons - the first 36 from me, and the rest from the brilliant, extraordinary women in my life, who make me smarter and stronger and better every single day.

DIARY

The Post Every Working Parent Needs To Read

January 6, 2017

We moms need each other.

I relate to this post utterly and completely, and thought that many of you would as well. So I asked Erin if I could publish it here.

Every working parent should read this.

Anxiety

Why I Drive

December 12, 2016

In the apple trees | Somewhere on I-5

I get asked about this (ancient) sweater all the time, and fiiinally found a similar one.

Whenever I make the drive down to L.A. - as I have at least once every two months since we moved to San Jose - I make up excuses to explain why I'm going. This time, for example, my excuses were: 1) I have a couple of meetings scheduled, 2) Francesca and I always have our own little mini-holiday celebration together, and 3) I just took a "special trip" with Goldie, and wanted to give Indy a special trip of his own.

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