Essays

I was engaging in a tradition perhaps hundreds of thousands of years old—transmitting moral and cultural wisdom to the next generation through spontaneous storytelling.

Our​ ​kids​ ​always​ ​had​ ​far​ ​too​ ​many​ ​books​—​I​ ​am​ ​not​ ​at​ ​all​ ​ashamed​ ​to​ ​admit​ ​it.​ ​​That’s why​ ​it​ ​seems​ ​so​ ​strange​ ​that​ ​I​ ​only​ ​brought​ ​ten​ ​of​ ​the​ ​children’s​…

I have no doubt that the book is the thing that cured me, that pushed me out of depression. It wasn’t sleeping again or the antidepressants; it was a collection…

A part of me was pleased to have my manifesto endorsed by a psychiatrist.

I know that when my baby is sleeping for ten minutes or two hours and I can steal a few moments away, I can sit down and do what I’ve…

Cottontail’s mothering work has transformed her into the ideal candidate for her dream job, not the kind of mush-brained, overtired, and unconfident person that I felt I’d become after a…

Driving my kids home from school one day, I told them about the writing challenge. “I want to do it,” my newly minted teenager said. In my mind I said,…

How ironic. The teacher-librarian’s daughter doesn’t read.

Two years have passed since my son and daughter departed for college, emptying my nest. I watch these adult siblings now weaving their individual lives and look for threads that…

About a third of the way through a book, I would stop and flip to the end. Not to the last page of the story, spoiler-style, but rather all the…

I want too much. I shouldn’t have come on this research trip with a five-month-old baby.