I ignored her recipe for many years as a way to avoid the loss. By Marcia Kester Doyle
Category Archive: Parenting Challenges
After bursting into tears, you text your brother-in-law: “Sorry, this is awkward, but make sure she doesn’t use a tampon for the bleeding.” By Lorren Lemmons
“Birth mom” does not make me feel like a baby machine without feelings, but it does clarify my role in her life. By Adrian Collins
As parents of older kids, socializing with other moms was apparently no longer part of the job description. By Anne Helena
Did my son really need a backpack every time he left the house? By Sherri Sacconaghi
I said goodbye to two decades’ worth of resources and relationships. It seemed perfectly appropriate for my emotions to go haywire. By Nicole Melanson
How exactly could I break this news to a kid who already went to bed every night scared of death to the point of tears? By Tanya Mozias Slavin
We don’t want our boys to be “cured.” There is no cure; autism is a chronic state, like arthritis, or love. By Elizabeth Michaelson Monaghan
Hearing “nonviable” is heartbreaking. Having to ignore that in front of 32 smiling second graders is even harder. By Caitlin Cherry
“Why is she like that?” my son asks. I hesitate. There’s no denying my mother’s passive aggressive disdain towards me. By Elizabeth Maria Naranjo
Is there any better teacher of life for a kid on the spectrum than a brother or sister? By Marya Markovich
How do I deal with my child’s social issues when I still haven’t worked through my own? By Amy Kline
“You’re a different person,” my husband said. This was years ago now. Thank god he was right. By Samantha Shanley
They are part of my life’s topography. Tiny specks on my map of choices, loves and losses, hurts and heartbreak. By Jordan Namerow
“I built it myself. What do you think?” My father didn’t look up, he just took a drink from his bottle and kept staring at the television. By John Graham
There’s Cooper, she’s at least a full head shorter than every other child on stage. This causes both attention and confusion. By Carina McLaughlin
Losing my mother, especially at a young age, was like losing my compass. By Gina Luongo
My mom took off her scarf and revealed her bald head. We all braced ourselves, but the woman at the shop didn’t flinch. By Kandace Chapple
I always thought depression came like a fog. Postpartum depression came on differently, like an 18-wheel truck slamming into a cement wall. By Laura Cline
I didn’t have my therapist hat on when my son went through his grief—I was just his mom, muddling through it alongside him. By Lori Gottlieb
My father was an every-other-weekend dad, then a once-a-summer dad and, finally, a phone-it-in dad. Then we lost touch. By Stephen J. Lyons
In the summer, I put my sunbaked arm down next to his hoping he will notice it’s not so different. By Adrienne Sciutto
These words by Joan Didion summed up my twenties, but they also capture the predicament of my current midlife crisis. By Elizabeth Newdom
We asked, you answered. In three words.
As parents sometimes it’s a struggle to carve out even a few minutes to breathe. By Steph Auteri