Non-Goals

Well, listen. I think you’re fine just the way you are. Sure, you might benefit from a crash course in assertiveness. It might do you some good to cut the sugar, to read the classics, to schedule yourself a detox bath twice a week. But it might not. It might just make you feel gloriously

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Safety Nets

Fall is ending. Our last unseasonably warm stretch is behind us, and I’ve traded my straw hat for wool. — The highlight of her evening is Octonauts. She likes it because Dashy (or is it Tweak?) talks like a Country-Western star and Bee has, since, adopted this trait for herself. Where’s mah coat? I need

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The Self in Self Care

My friend Anna bakes the most delicious confections. When we lived in Los Angeles, she’d arrive to the cookout or rooftop party with something extravagantly hand-crafted, like a Malaysian Seri Muka or artisan lavender shortbread cookies infused with a sprig of fresh mint from her garden. Once, she tackled an oversized butterscotch creme brulee for

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Plugged / Unplugged

Well, here’s what I think about being unplugged. I love it. I love to be unplugged, to wax philosophically over what our nation’s ultra-connectedness is perhaps doing to our children, to our elders, to the society at large, to the shape of our culture forever and ever, Amen. We talk about it often, at dinner

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What Simple Looks Like

Living simply does not mean you decant quinoa into glass jars and your medicine cabinet is free of Pepto Bismol. It does not mean you wear the same moccasins daily, or that you have long wavy hair and a flower crown and you frolic in the field by day and when the moon rises, look,

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A New Way of Being

A year now. For a year now, I’ve been trying a new way of being. It’s a slower life, one that allows a tiny splash of grace to trickle into the moments that are frenzied, like when the dogs are barking and the kitchen timer just went off, and the toddler peed on the rug

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My Anxiety Cure

Cure is perhaps the wrong word, but I have seen this technique work time and time again, in my own life and in the life of others. It worked when I found myself in Los Angeles, lost in the Sepulveda sea, pulling over and enduring my second panic attack of the week. It worked when

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Imaginary

Bee. Last week, you played with Barnacles, Peso, Shellington, Kwazii, Dashy and Trick (whom I am mispronouncing, you tell me). They are your friends in Ecuador, and they are found in the treetops, but sometimes they move to the fish pond and you must call them each, one by one, until they float to the

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