My first child put me through a lot, but you should know, my first "child" was not human. 

He was a feral husky mix.

In the end, I gave that dog everything, and he gave me more. 

He gave me the gift of knowing that my love had the power to heal: him, me,...

It's no secret that parenting can be exhausting. 

All the caretaking. All the bicker-brokering. All the driving. 

But while all of those can be tiring, they are not what exhaust you. 

 Here is what actually exhausts you:

The worry - You lie awake at night wondering if you are...

I remember as a kid looking at my mom and thinking “Why is she hurting so much?” Then I grew up and found out. Grown-up life could be genuinely hard. I could love my kids massively and still sometimes hate parenting them.  

But now that it was my turn, I found I simply could...

This is not a post about guns or death. 

This is a post about life. About what it means to bring people into the world and raise them, and the contract of safety that we are forced to rely upon when we put them out into society.

Too many things now threaten the assumed safety of that social...

I remember before I became a parent, I asked a close friend with twins to tell me more about what his experience was really like. He paused and thought for a moment and summed it up in one word:

"Relentless."

Wow, I thought. Really?? / What does that even mean/ And is it that bad?

And while my...

I cried over an egg the other day. 

Well, there was a bit more to it actually.

In fact, there was so much to it I sat down and wrote a poem after it happened. 

 Read my poem right here and see if you can relate.

Luckily while I felt a bit alone in my kitchen at that moment, in my...

Is it okay to be happy in the middle of a pandemic?

And what if you're not? 

These are the questions that swirl in my mind on some days as I look at my children and wonder how all of this 2020 life will affect them (and us) for years to come. 

So far, our little family has been able to...

So about a month ago I received an email about a bunch of teenagers who were doing the next Climate Reality Training with Al Gore...

I had three almost simultaneous thoughts:

 1 Wow, those kids are awesome. 

 2 I am decidedly less awesome in...

They say hindsight is 20/20. How incredibly ironic and prophetic it is then, that this year of tumult we are in right now is the year "2020."

...as in the year we should have seen coming, in hindsight. 

Living through all that is happening right now sometimes...

WARNING: Honest, messy thoughts here. I am not going to say here what I am "supposed to say." I am going to speak from my heart. From my personal reality, showing up in total and complete honesty. I am learning. Here in front of you. With you. 

Dear Parents,

I,...

Now parenting thrills me. That’s why I keep doing it.

Oh right. That and the fact that I’ve got kids, so hey no choice. But I do it willingly and with love because I have now hacked the code. And hacking it fills me with the joy I imagine Edison may have felt...

For those of you who know me, this email may come as a bit of a shock. It is not what I usually recommend. 

For those who don't know me well, then you should know I do NOT recommend rewards and punishments as a general "go-to" for parenting. I think they are a poor substitute for...