I saw The Race to Nowhere last week. I was tremendously moved by it. I’m not sure I know what to do, precisely, with my ever-stronger sense of how I want to parent my kids. There is a doctor of adolescent medicine in the film who says even he, a specialist who writes books about [...]
I am delighted to be included in an upcoming anthology of essays called Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood. I’ve read a bunch of the essays, and they are smart, funny, wise, and touching. The authors are a broad array of women who have in common that they are [...]
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings. – Wendell Berry These Wendell Berry lines have been banging around in my head for [...]
Kristin Noelle has a new blog, Trust Tending, which is all about what trust means in our lives. The subtitle of Trust Tending is Reflections, Conversations, and Art to Nourish Life Beyond Fear. I love Kristin’s writing and her drawing, and think she’s exploring some very important and fertile terrain on Trust Tending. Kristin interviewed [...]
I am obsessed with this song. Obsessed. Two small, not-at-all-weird things about me are relevant here: I go through phases where I listen to one song, over and over and over again, and I listen to Christmas carols year-round. This is Annie Lennox’s Universal Child and the words have haunted my thoughts for weeks. I [...]
Everyday life is a practice and a poem. These words came to me on Friday in a yoga class. My first yoga class in more months than I can count. My body remembered the poses like some deeply known but forgotten language. My mind ran and ran, occasionally settling into a thought, and this one [...]
It’s no secret that I have deep concern about parenting in today’s culture. I’ve talked about my resistance to over-scheduling my children, my worries about how to preserve wonder in their lives, and my concerns about the overall intensity that seems to be taking over childhood. I wrote a post on Zen Family Habits about [...]
Dear Whit, Today you are six. It is so appallingly cliched of me, but let me just say that I cannot believe it. Six years ago you arrived, your birth in the middle of the night the complete opposite of, and antidote to, your sister’s long, arduous labor. You were not, in fact, as they’d [...]
I just tucked this guy in for the last time as a five year old. I came upstairs for goodnight to see that he’d accessorized his pajamas with this sweatband (which has been a favorite for a long time). That’s his monkey that he sleeps with every single night, who is (creatively) named Beloved Monkey. [...]
I have been thinking for days about writing a post about snow, and, lo and behold, it’s snowing again! It’s so great with the universe comes through like that. Of course, it’s been snowing almost non-stop since December 26th, so possibly it’s a coincidence. When I look out my office window, whose four panes frame [...]
