Essays
The Legacy of Rejecting Coercive Control: What Children Learn About Safety and Love
Changing one’s part in a relationship shaped by coercive control is a declaration, for themselves and their children, that dignity and emotional safety are fundamental.
When Your Co-Parent Disappoints Your Child
How might one validate their child’s feelings without criticizing their co-parent?
Parenting Plans: Peace is in the Details
A thoughtfully designed Parenting Plan can honor each parent’s values while offering growing, evolving children the benefit of growing, evolving parents.
To Helen on My 50th Birthday
I was not longing for Helen or the time of my life when she first appeared. I was feeling something about myself now, as related to my ideas of her always.
Who Left Who: Usually Debatable and a Stand That Hinders Growth
What would it feel like to accept your former partner’s experience of your relationship’s ending?
Two Homes for the Holidays
The layers of holiday celebration promise to test hearts and co-parenting mettle over the next month.
Let Children Grieve
Let’s challenge ourselves to slow down – to heal, foster closeness, and assure our children of our support, and their own resilience, in difficult times.
Two Households, One Camper
If you’re raising a camper, you’re giving them a gift that will resonate for a lifetime. Keep the focus on your child’s experience, and you’ll all do great.
A Truer Mother’s Day
The idea that Mother’s Day should be reframed to sincerely honor its range of emotional implications isn’t a fight I’ll be taking to retailers, but I do offer the idea to you.
Five Reasons I Am Grateful for My Marriage (Now That It’s Over)
A marriage doesn’t need to last a lifetime to cultivate growth, gratitude, and relational rewards that go the distance.
Romantic Love Has No Place In My Valentine’s Day
As a representative of the “I don’t care about Valentine’s Day” set, am I just working an expectations shell game on myself?