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Thanksgiving Rehash-2019
You are extraordinarily blessed if you spent the day with people who pissed you off and hurt your feelings. Remember that. Those opinionated, loud mouthed, obnoxious people are your family by birth or marriage or by choice. You will either have to face the enormous pain of their passing or they will be the ones left when you go. This is good. It is the whole point of life- to surround ourselves with people that matter, people that we love and keep working on and struggle with. Do they see things differently than you do? Is their experience something you can learn from, be open to? That is their gift in your life.
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Pre-Turkey Musings
I always struggle with the “Gratitude” message around November. Of course I get that people who focus on gratitude have less stress and better mental health but when we pressure people to be grateful it often increases shame instead. Sometimes I get sucked into a downward spiral of feeling bad that I feel bad.
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Again With the Holiday Family Stress Post
Assertive Bill of Rights for the Holiday Season You Choose
Between the weather and the impeachment hearings- it feels like it is going to be an especially long, brutal winter. Each November I share a version of my Assertiveness Bill of Rights for the Holidays as my gift to you and your family. Tis the season of hurt feelings, unreasonable expectations, trauma triggers and emotional eating.
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Mother’s Day- Emergency Husband Alert Network
Next Sunday is Mother’s Day. I know- it is a Hallmark Holiday. We can and should honor the people we love each and every day…blah, blah, blah…
Mother’s Day is very complicated because at least in our community- Mothering is very complicated.
Mother’s Day is as important to your marriage as Valentine’s Day and your anniversary. I speak now as your Marriage Geek. This is very important. Mother’s Day is your chance to show your wife just how much you see what she does, appreciate her efforts and love how she loves your kids. -
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Rewriting the Pink Holiday
Romance communicates admiration, devotion, and lust for that person who means the world to you. It requires emotion, intention and action. You can try finding something at Target…because Target has everything but you have to bring your own feelings, set your own intention and put your expression into action.
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Thanksgiving Rehash 2018
Every year I take time on Thanksgiving morning to write my blog post and set it to deliver once the festivities are done. Last year I was preparing to leave the home I had lived in for 17 years, leaving my marriage and transforming my family into a new kind of family. This year, coming up on a year apart, I am most thankful that all is well. It hasn’t…
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Emergency Husband Alert Network
I rerun some version of this every year. Please share. As 96% of my readers are female it is going to take some effort to reach the super secret husband network. If your children are old enough to have jobs and cars- ignore this warning. Those kids are on their own. If your children are not old enough to drive to Target-please pay attention. Sunday is Mother’s Day. I know-…
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Why Valentine’s Day is So Complicated
Most of us were raised by human parents, with their human failings and they raised us with less than perfect emotional responses. Whether they were neglectful or distant or critical or inconsistent or overbearing or intense, there were times when their feelings interfered with their ability to be appropriately responsive to your feelings. (I know- we screw this up with our kids pretty regularly and we’re working on that, too.)…
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2017 Bites the Dust
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Henry Ford New Years is an arbitrary holiday when we celebrate the turn of the odometer of our lives and the purchase of a new calendar. We look back at the 12 months passed, what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve lost and we look ahead at the enormous possibility of the uncharted waters of the year…
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‘Tis the season…of let downs, frustrations and too much of everything
Thanks to all of you who are still reading me after the mess I made last week… the whole post I transposed breathe/breath… I get it- you don’t have to be a grammar nazi to have that make your skin crawl. Sometimes my whole purpose in life is to be the poster child for “how to screw up and keep going.” My children are blessed to have a parent who…
