How’s your budget as the back-to-school expenses come rolling in? Because I’ve been using You Need a Budget for a while, I had the money I needed saved in advance for the first time. A life-enhancement enthusiast, I’ve been delighted to discover that consciously spending and saving is core to my self-care. For my son Theo’s first eight years, I … Read More
When does it start to feel good?
How are your last days of summer treating you? Back-to-school season always puts an extra skip in my step. As I’m readying my son for the fresh, unwritten pages of fourth grade, I’ve been contemplating one of my own primary school memories. Reproductive education started in 6th grade in the suburban New Jersey public schools where I grew up. Not-quite-ten-years-old, … Read More
The Joy of Ex
I didn’t know when I was divorcing that I’d eventually come out the other side happier. I didn’t know that I’d come to love and appreciate and respect my co-parent again, in a fresh and true and far more sustainable way. I didn’t know that my son would would thrive. I didn’t know how incredibly resourced, powerful, and courageous I … Read More
I Wish Someone Had Told Me
I wish someone had told me: You will throw up before and after every divorce negotiation call for a year. You will lose half of your hair, and it will grow back gray in a halo of friz. You will go into unbelievable, unprecedented debt. Your son will ask you to see “the happy face,” and you will see in … Read More
Letting your eyes adjust to the light
Sometimes you need grief to rust a lock open. And lawyers to say things so ugly that the ground on which your marriage lived will never send up another false flower. And you need to prop up what can no longer stand into art or forgiveness, some kind of distance that lets your eyes actually adjust to the light.
A Mother’s Day Blessing for the Single Mother
You are an extraordinary mother. Every day, you do what you can do—and it is enough. The homework, the garbage, the dishes, the laundry, the pets, the yard, the carpools, the roof that needs repair, the friendship that needs repair, the deadlines, the discipline, the bruised egos and broken bones. You take care of it all. Every day and every night. … Read More
How to eat an elephant
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Let’s put aside the disgrace of actually eating an elephant and focus on the metaphoric value of this little aphorism. Many of us experience divorce as an “elephant in the room” that somehow takes over the whole house. Digesting the meaning and impact of this runaway elephant is not … Read More
There comes a time
There comes a time when what happened in your marriage is simply a sad, sweet story. And what happened in your divorce is its sad sweet climax, followed by the sad, sweet denouement of co-parenting. And you love those stories as you love your dear, old dying dog who has defended every threshold you have crossed for the past 13 … Read More
Tomorrow is Another Day
It was a perfect storm: The anniversary of the end of my pregnancy and marriage. PMS. The veterinarian telling me my dog had maybe a week to live. An out-of-town teaching engagement bookended by two intensely demanding weeks at work. Because the greater hell would be to lose my dog while away than to lose my reputation, I cancelled the … Read More
Unbearable Lightness of Being (Single)
I was headed to the food carts downtown at work. As I walked passed the shoe shop’s great window bank, I was surprised by the experience of my own reflection. There was my familiar and friendly face, well worn, rising up out of my giant, gray scarf knotted beneath my chin. I looked so…complete. I had my $5 and I … Read More
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