Last week I attended a double memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate the lives of Jim and Sally Paxton, close family friends who played a pivotal role in my life growing up. A dynamic duo, the Paxtons were full of zest, energy...
Do you ever worry about the bad habits your children watch you throw down on a daily basis? You know, like when you yell at your son to stop yelling at his sister, work through entire beach vacations, and drink wine from a box? The fact that...
For most, if not all, of my professional career, my choice to live in Richmond, Virginia has been questioned. It began decades ago in grad school. I attended one of the top advertising programs in the country—at Virginia Commonwealth...
The notion of “living in the present moment” is all the rage. Articles, books, workshops, retreats, conferences, and talk show segments all talk about what it means to be mindful. Yet nobody really explains how to do it! I’ve read countless...
I study mothers’ lives for a living, and if one thing takes the wind out of our sails, it’s plotting, planning, and pulling off a child’s birthday party. When executing a fete for, say, our first-born’s fourth birthday, we go to ridiculous lengths...
I’ll never forget staring out the window of an Amtrak that was traveling from New York City to Richmond, after submitting the final manuscript for my first book. I’d been waiting to exhale that particular exhale for a long-ass time. As the roads...
It feels like an unwritten rule that going through tough times is somehow not allowed. As if it’s possible to avoid the twists and turns of life—and if you can’t, then the least you can do is hide the hard parts from others. Right? A trip to Wyoming...
Learning to love yourself can be a challenge. We have no problem loving our kids unconditionally, but when it comes to loving ourselves, we tend to put a whole lot of conditions in place. We say we’ll feel better about ourselves when we lose some...