‘Tis the season of beginnings, most obviously of a new cycle of time of course. This often comes with some attempts at fresh starts and renewed resolutions. I have a number of such beginnings in mind for myself. What I am thinking about however, is something more philosophical but also much more salient, especially in…
Anyone spending time with a young teenager knows that they can be lovely and intriguing one moment and irrational and angry the next. Their emotions are strong and their prefrontal cortex is under major reconstruction, resulting in incredible highs, desperate lows, mature insight, and impulsive reactions – sometimes all in one day. The early teen…
My 17-year-old son Jacksen bounded out of his room this morning, fresh out of bed, greeting us without a hello or good morning but instead straight-up yelling, “That’s it! I’m not staying in this house today! I’m going out! And I don’t care what anybody says right now!” Did I say, “No you are not!…
Health is something we all desire for our children. Physical health is fairly straightforward to assess, as problems usually show up in terms of pain and discomfort. Emotional health, however, is a bit trickier to measure; how do we even know what to look for? Consider this story from Tamara … I had a weeping…
I’m on my way up to the mountains with my husband and two young daughters. It’s early. Still a bit dark. That’s how it is this time of year – January, on the other side of the winter solstice, and yet not very far from the shortest, and darkest, day of the year. That’s how…
When my eldest child was born the whole world shrunk down to the size of her face, the feel of her skin, the sound of her cries. The days grew long, I was bleary eyed with exhaustion, and all my energy went into the here and now, into meeting all the moment-to-moment needs of a…