Real love is more than a one-time, seemingly iron-clad pledge that we will never be apart. If you're over 20, you've probably figured out that meaningful love isn't constricting; it doesn't chain you to one place or to each other.
— Faith Salie
I don't think, in my entire 18 years as a student, I ever used an exclamation point in an academic paper.
Boys have always known they could do anything; all they had to do was look around at their presidents, religious leaders, professional athletes, at the statues that stand erect in big cities and small. Girls have always known they were allowed to feel anything - except anger.
Are we a people who put politics over integrity? Or are we a country of voters and leaders, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, colleagues, humans who care about treating each other with basic dignity?
It's one thing to decry and defy political correctness in the name of efficiently achieving clarity or revealing an honest truth. But it's quite another thing entirely to support name-calling and nastiness.
Harassment doesn't just happen to 'social observers' and 'comedians' - women who express themselves publicly are reliably verbally attacked online and in person, not for their substance but for their form.
My first husband and I never came close to having kids.
Getting a pedicure seems to be a standard pre-birth ritual, presumably because it is relaxing and makes you feel pretty even though your little piggies are going to be covered in those awesome no-skid hospital socks which I kept on for three days.
I know how much sleep I need, how much time on the elliptical I need, and how much chocolate that buys me.
Am I an elitist because I like wine?
Whenever I told women - friends or acquaintances - that I had to go to divorce court, they'd invariably, without skipping a beat, ask, 'What are you going to wear?' It was like instant female solidarity: of course it mattered what I was going to wear.
Approval makes the world go round, even if many of us want to transcend our hunger for it.
I asked God for a healthy baby. An answer arrived in my daughter.
I'm not proud that, in my time, I've tried to harness the power of prayer to fit into a pair of jeans.
If you're ever bcc'd, do not go near 'reply all.' 'Bcc' is 'blind carbon copy.' It means you're a fly on the wall, dude! If you hit reply all, it's beyond bad etiquette to out the person who gave you the superpower of invisibility. It's like screaming, 'I'm a spy!'
Snowflakery is simply being human, which makes it a pretty flakey insult.
If I could have had my baby sooner, I would have, simply to spend more years with him.
No longer is a geek identifiable by a pale complexion, black-rimmed glasses, a bowling shirt that says 'Nerd World Order.' No, geeks are everywhere. And they're cool!
Sometimes art helps illuminate science.
The t-shirts that declare 'Girls Rule the World' offer an empirical falsehood, but at least the aspiration is there.
Wildfires can leave the land with burn scars that last for years.
Making fun of people's looks is something that children do - mean children - and, in fact, linguists have determined that Trump actually speaks like a 3rd grader.
Most of my best friends had children in their early 40s.
If you want to become a mother, you can. I promise. It may not happen the way you think, but it's possible. It just takes a combination of a little planning and a lot of living your life.
Whether you plan to labor with an epidural or the Pitocin Fairy pins you down or you end up having an emergency C-section, there are still choices you can make throughout your entire birth experience that allow you to feel some control over what is probably the most dramatic day of your life.
I have no problem being full-term pregnant and do not understand women who say, 'I can't wait to get this baby out of me!'
On a meaningful day, everything you wear can have meaning. It becomes what I wore That Day, whether that day is a beginning or an end.
For weeks I ran through a mental inventory of my closet. Did I want to wear something new - to christen it and forever make it The Divorce Dress?
Famous people I've interviewed - powerful people, brilliant people, people whom you look at and think, 'Seriously, do you not have pores?' - have turned to me after interviews and asked, 'Was I okay? I hope I was okay.'
They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and in the foxhole of my divorce, I found solace in walking to St. Patrick's Cathedral and lighting candles.
Here's a simple guideline: if five names or fewer are cc'd, just go nuts and hit 'reply all.' But if more than five folks appear in the cc line, pause. Give it a thought. Some people are promiscuous and cc dozens of people who don't need to know each other's business.
I once accidentally 'replied all' and sent an email complaining about my then-boyfriend to a bunch of strangers. It was meant for my friend who was a bride, but I ended up addressing her entire wedding party. Her marriage lasted; my relationship didn't.
I'm a snowflake. And so are you. Your children are snowflakes. And so are mine. And those who protest the loudest about not being snowflakes? I can see your six-fold ice crystals from here! Because every person, empirically, is unique.
Mothers of all ages delight in their children, but I don't know that, if I were younger, I would feel as acutely, profoundly, preciously grateful for every smile, squeal, and - yes - diaper blowout.
I admit I feel funny when I use the word 'whom' as I'm talking to my diapered children, but I persist.
The boy taught from infancy to be tough is emotionally doomed.
Hours after I gave birth to my first child, my husband cradled all five pounds of our boy and said, gently, 'Hi, Sweetpea.' Not 'Buddy' or 'Little Man.' Sweetpea. The word filled me with unanticipated comfort.
People who champion Trump say they don't want politics-as-usual. But 'politic' is also an adjective. It means 'tactful and diplomatic.' It's necessary for an elected official to be politic.
Donald Trump, who surely has lots of high-stakes issues on which to focus, is consumed with the appearance of women.
I spent my late twenties and all of my thirties figuring out what I was supposed to be doing and where my home was.
Well-done eyelash extensions make you look beautiful and doe-eyed without a lick of makeup.
I've always wanted, notionally, to be a mother. And I was certain I would be, because everyone I know, gay or straight, married or single, rich or not so much, who truly wants to have a child figures out a way, some way, to have one - whether through adoption, fostering, surrogacy, fertility, accident, or persistence.
It was my husband who had to open all the baby shower gifts which were haunting me in their candy-colored gift wrap - thank you notes demanding to be written.
Divorce court seemed to inspire in my girlfriends 1940s-era fashion fantasies, not only for me, but for themselves.
Women are blessed with lots and lots of extra ways to win or lose validation. If you're a woman, you'll be judged on your beauty and your wit and how often you smile. You'll be judged on how much hair you have in some places and not in others.
I am an approval junkie.
Having grown up Catholic, my prayers were scripted - memorized and deployed in church and before bed. As a young adult, I veered off script and talked to God more plainly. And by 'talked to,' I mean that I basically asked for things to turn out the way I wanted them to.
We all think Al Gore invented email so we could save time and save paper, to save trees. And that includes phone trees.
It's fitting that an insult largely aimed at youth has made children of those who use it. 'Snowflake' reminds us how much we need climate change... in politics.
I'm an old mom of a young baby, and every moment matters.
