Giving Ourselves What Technology Can’t

My book, The Opt-Out Family will land on your stoops and library shelves in a few weeks, which means I’ve finally arrived at the universal publishing milestone in which an author wakes at 3am and realizes she’s forgotten to say something that needs saying. In all honesty, the book is 320 pages long and has

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Currently

This weekend, Bee will don a polyester veil and trot down the sanctuary as Mary in our church’s pageant. Can you send me her measurements, or take a look at these size charts? our children’s director asks before sending me links to various costumes on Amazon. We sift through dozens of options, find ourselves giggling

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How to Slow Your Life

Two years ago, on a brightly lit stage in West L.A., Maria Shriver asks me this: But how? How do you do it? What would you tell someone who wants to slow their life, but can’t? Who feels totally buried already? I pause, blink at the lights. I say something about how there’s no easy

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3 Good-for-Me Habits, and Another One

First, something: I’m wary of assigning sanctimonious yarns to everyday behaviors. In truth, what makes for a good habit today doesn’t always carry the years. Related – For months, in college, I subsisted solely on free dinner rolls from the restaurant I waitressed at in a valiant attempt to save enough money for my first

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Currently

Everything, is all. This month alone: A casket kissed. A baby lost. Hot stage lights and a Gruffalo mouse. Sprinkles on a sundae. Smoke in our hair, fevered cheeks. Buttercream licked from the whisk. Last week, a blonde six-year-old tapes paper elephant ears to a headband and tosses herself down a set of stairs. The

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Currently

I want you to give you back to me, he yells from his crib. The toddler is fighting an afternoon nap; I’m trying hard not to lose. I want you back, he whimpers. In my bedroom, Bee and I listen with our ears pressed to the monitor, waiting quietly for Scout to settle so we

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Happy Haul-idays

The hustle, the bustle. I can accurately claim neither, having just emerged from a fireside nap on the hard floor. In our home, we keep a tradition of letting the kids open a shared gift on a day where it feels like Christmas, be it November, December or beyond. This year, the day fell upon

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