You, with your relative youth your pout, your upward gaze. A young stellar object. And me, in front of you by decades. I see you as if in a mirror, behind me coming up fast in your body a month now perhaps for every year I’ve practiced being alive. I’m a supernova to your protostar. […]
Category Archives: teenagers
So we wait to hear the words of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspect apprehended for the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent spree of murder and mayhem. This kid lies in a hospital bed in serious condition with a throat injury, intubated and sedated, while an elite counter-terrorism team stands by to interrogate him the moment […]
Motherhood is daunting. No matter how many coats of denial and idealism one whitewashes it with, it is a formidable journey and it is not always easy to stay convinced of the delightfulness of the upbringing and management of the fruits of our genetic entanglements. Life is up and down, and take-it-as-it-comes, and full of […]
When my first-born son was in fifth grade, he began having major issues with the idea of going to school every day. He made it through that school year which was not coincidentally a time of challenge for our family. His sixth grade year got off to a rocky start and continued along that trajectory for the duration of the school year, and he begged his father […]
On Friday I had the honor of teaching yoga for four freshman PE classes at my daughter’s all-girls high school. My approach with these classes was to focus on stress management and self-awareness through some guided meditation and yoga poses. The students came streaming into the room, about 40 in each class, all giggly and chatty. I heard some of the girls in one of the classes coming […]
Several days ago I wrote about how my children witnessed the aftermath of a shooting in our neighborhood. If you want to read about it, you can click here. My kids are processing their feelings about it in different ways. My 17-year-old daughter had horrible nightmares a few nights ago. She dreamt about stepping over bodies after a massacre at a […]
When my first child was born 20 years ago, ”attachment parenting” was a new and somewhat controversial child-rearing philosophy which involved strict adherence to a demanding set of rules and behaviors including: natural birthing, leaving boys uncircumcised, babywearing, breast-feeding and child-led weaning, co-sleeping, not allowing babies to “cry-it-out”, practicing positive discipline, and so on. While I didn’t like to put a label on the way I […]
Yesterday was my daughter’s first day of her junior year of high school, and my son starts his 7th grade year at a new middle school next week. I’m in the middle of a rude and abrupt awakening from the endless-summer fantasy I’ve indulged myself in these past few weeks. Like always in the month of August, I’ve had that stupid “mother-amnesia” thing […]
I was chatting with a couple of people at a party last weekend about recent pop hits, a subject on which I am vastly knowledgeable on account of being a mom of teenagers (I use my children as a front to quench my ongoing desire for crappy pop music). As a child I was passionate about AM radio, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 , American Bandstand, Soul Train, and Solid Gold. […]
As a mother of three adolescents, my attempts at a calm, somewhat detached emotional state are constantly tested by fluctuating sensations of pure joy and total terror. My extreme emotional reactions are usually in response to their activities and behaviors, or to recollection of my own at their age. Outside of sitting continuously in meditation, there is no detachment practice strong enough […]
