I tell my kids all the time that I'm so lucky they chose me to be their mom.
Manspread, mansplaining, manterrupting - all of it, whether conscious or not, diminishes women's voices, minds, and bodies.
If you don't know what mansplaining is, or manterrupting or manspread, then you're probably a guy.
I don't mean to brag, but my water filter curates tap water, offering moi the finest combination of H, 2, and O available.
Social media provides a constant platform on which to feature what we deem beautiful, meaningful, and worthy.
I think the curation consternation is this: Just because you like something or list something, are you really curating?
One man's content is another woman's crap. And the crappy content - let's call it crontent - will never go away.
The fact that oversharing exists at all as a noteworthy notion is a relief, because I'm afraid that our younger generations could grow up having no idea what it even means to overshare.
Not that I'm any good at it, but the beauty of meditation is that it liberates us from our own thoughts.
To my knowledge, there are, pretty much, two ways to be interesting: One is to actually do interesting things, achieve the remarkable. The other way to be interesting is to be interested, curious about the world and about other people - not relentlessly revelatory about yourself.
Despite amazing advances in fertility to help older women get pregnant, the complications, increased chances of autism, and chromosomal abnormalities are significant considerations.
If I could have had my baby sooner, I would have, simply to spend more years with him.
I'm an old mom of a young baby, and every moment matters.
Snowflakery is simply being human, which makes it a pretty flakey insult.
It's fitting that an insult largely aimed at youth has made children of those who use it. 'Snowflake' reminds us how much we need climate change... in politics.
If you're ever bcc'd, do not go near 'reply all.' 'Bcc' is 'blind carbon copy.' It means you're a fly on the wall, dude! If you hit reply all, it's beyond bad etiquette to out the person who gave you the superpower of invisibility. It's like screaming, 'I'm a spy!'
We all think Al Gore invented email so we could save time and save paper, to save trees. And that includes phone trees.
Here's a simple guideline: if five names or fewer are cc'd, just go nuts and hit 'reply all.' But if more than five folks appear in the cc line, pause. Give it a thought. Some people are promiscuous and cc dozens of people who don't need to know each other's business.
I'm not proud that, in my time, I've tried to harness the power of prayer to fit into a pair of jeans.
Having grown up Catholic, my prayers were scripted - memorized and deployed in church and before bed. As a young adult, I veered off script and talked to God more plainly. And by 'talked to,' I mean that I basically asked for things to turn out the way I wanted them to.
I asked God for a healthy baby. An answer arrived in my daughter.
I am an approval junkie.
Famous people I've interviewed - powerful people, brilliant people, people whom you look at and think, 'Seriously, do you not have pores?' - have turned to me after interviews and asked, 'Was I okay? I hope I was okay.'
Approval makes the world go round, even if many of us want to transcend our hunger for it.
Whenever I told women - friends or acquaintances - that I had to go to divorce court, they'd invariably, without skipping a beat, ask, 'What are you going to wear?' It was like instant female solidarity: of course it mattered what I was going to wear.
On a meaningful day, everything you wear can have meaning. It becomes what I wore That Day, whether that day is a beginning or an end.
Am I an elitist because I like wine?
It was my husband who had to open all the baby shower gifts which were haunting me in their candy-colored gift wrap - thank you notes demanding to be written.
I have no problem being full-term pregnant and do not understand women who say, 'I can't wait to get this baby out of me!'
I know how much sleep I need, how much time on the elliptical I need, and how much chocolate that buys me.
Whether you plan to labor with an epidural or the Pitocin Fairy pins you down or you end up having an emergency C-section, there are still choices you can make throughout your entire birth experience that allow you to feel some control over what is probably the most dramatic day of your life.
Getting a pedicure seems to be a standard pre-birth ritual, presumably because it is relaxing and makes you feel pretty even though your little piggies are going to be covered in those awesome no-skid hospital socks which I kept on for three days.
Well-done eyelash extensions make you look beautiful and doe-eyed without a lick of makeup.
If you want to become a mother, you can. I promise. It may not happen the way you think, but it's possible. It just takes a combination of a little planning and a lot of living your life.
My first husband and I never came close to having kids.
I spent my late twenties and all of my thirties figuring out what I was supposed to be doing and where my home was.
Most of my best friends had children in their early 40s.
Harassment doesn't just happen to 'social observers' and 'comedians' - women who express themselves publicly are reliably verbally attacked online and in person, not for their substance but for their form.
Donald Trump, who surely has lots of high-stakes issues on which to focus, is consumed with the appearance of women.
Making fun of people's looks is something that children do - mean children - and, in fact, linguists have determined that Trump actually speaks like a 3rd grader.
People who champion Trump say they don't want politics-as-usual. But 'politic' is also an adjective. It means 'tactful and diplomatic.' It's necessary for an elected official to be politic.
Are we a people who put politics over integrity? Or are we a country of voters and leaders, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, colleagues, humans who care about treating each other with basic dignity?
The t-shirts that declare 'Girls Rule the World' offer an empirical falsehood, but at least the aspiration is there.
The boy taught from infancy to be tough is emotionally doomed.
Sometimes art helps illuminate science.
I don't think, in my entire 18 years as a student, I ever used an exclamation point in an academic paper.
I admit I feel funny when I use the word 'whom' as I'm talking to my diapered children, but I persist.
Real love is more than a one-time, seemingly iron-clad pledge that we will never be apart. If you're over 20, you've probably figured out that meaningful love isn't constricting; it doesn't chain you to one place or to each other.