I almost slugged my mother in a hospital basement, and for an instant it seemed perfectly normal. — A few weeks ago, in the run up to getting my mother into the same assisted living facility where my father is, I took her to the doctor for paperwork, blood work, and all the other hoops you have to jump through to get someone into an assisted living facility…

I’m done pretending that everything’s fine — I’m not okay. It’s a simple three-word confession. I’m. Not. Okay. I’m not okay with the rise of authoritarianism, the rhetoric of “my freedom vs. yours,” or the consistent need for views to be punctuated by the ring of rifle fire. Every morning I’m faced with reminders on the backs…

There are a lot — It was a mistake to sell my apartment in Brooklyn. It was a mistake to come back to Los Angeles for a boy. It was a mistake not to swim through a magical underwater tunnel in Kauai, that led to a cylinder-like rock formation with a ceiling to the sky…

What you don’t want to know about parental grief — I’m pretty sure you don’t want honesty. You want to hear that I’m moving on, accepting her death in whatever context acceptance means for you. You don’t want to hear how hard this is. You don’t want to know about her ashes inside the handmade urn that sits on the…

I lost my son to suicide. Now I’ve lost the necklace I got to remember him. — After an unseasonably gray start of summer in the Pacific Northwest, a glorious stretch of sunshine and bluebird skies promised blooming wildflowers, pristine mountain lakes, and expansive views: perfect weather for hiking. …

What summer looks like from my almost-empty nest — Ten years ago my kids were eleven and eight and the shape of my summer was completely different. Back then, I was obsessed with keeping the girls busy while trying to get work done from my home office. It was chaos. It was hard. It was all about to come…

This is the life hacks of all life hacks — I hate it when people give unsolicited advice. For instance, yesterday an old friend walked into my house for the first time, and told me to get rid of all my books because they made the place looked cluttered. “You really like books, huh?” she said, staring at a small…

It’s not funny. It never was. — I grew up hearing my mom consistently called stupid. Fat. Ugly. Everything she ever did was criticized. “I ought to get up and just beat you,” was repeated to both of us, regularly. And we were expected to laugh. And we did. We laughed. We laughed because this was as…