unabashedlyAUTHENTIC

Hello !

I am just going to be straight up with you. For a week (okay, make that two or possibly three) in January 2023, my motivation was nowhere to be found. Getting dinner on the table and walking the dogs felt overwhelming. On a scale of 1 to 10, my productivity was clocking in at a meager 1 when I typically hum along at a 7. This was certainly not the first time I've experienced a post-holiday, long-gray-winter funk. Nevertheless, I spent several days allowing myself to buy into the myth th…

Hello friend. It's been quite some time since you've heard from me. Where have I been, and why the radio silence? In order for you to let me back into your inbox, I feel I owe you an explanation. It seems appropriate timing, as January is "Mental Wellness Month."

As I've referenced many times in these missives, my family and I live on the east coast. My highly autonomous mother, on the other hand, had been living alone on a 340-acre ranch in remote Colorado with three dogs, six horses, and 25 h…

Earlier this week, I found myself in savasana in a Core Power Yoga studio in Colorado Springs. For non-yogis, savasana is the final resting pose at the end of almost every yoga practice, and basically involves lying flat on your back on your mat with your eyes closed for a few minutes. The enthusiastic instructor had a very Colorado-esque handlebar mustache and shoulders that flexed in ways that I didn’t know were possible. He guided us into the final resting pose as he intoned, “So whatever you…

This charming little sign has lived for years in a prominent place in our kitchen. I installed it there lest any guests get the crazy idea that we're NORMAL.

Starting at eight years old, I swam on a swim team at a local pool club. We’d leave the house at 8 a.m. each weekday. I’d hold on tight, one arm around Mom’s waist and the other gripping my towel, as we sped on her motorcycle down the east shore of the lake toward the club, the dips of the road memorized by my stomach. She had a Yamaha 250…

New Year, Same You! Long Live the Anti Resolution Movement.

It’s the middle of the month now, and I wonder how many of you have spent the days since January 1 trying to change something – your hips or lips or parenting or account balance. You’re trying to keep your RESOLUTIONS. 

I find the entire idea of New Year’s resolutions off-putting at best. They imply (or outright assert, if we’re being honest) that you are decidedly not what or where you need to be. Even the word itself, “resolution,” …

Labor Day 2021 - Move-in day at Stratton Mountain School for Aaron '22 and Mary '24 

You don't need me to tell you that there are moments in life that require you to suddenly reprioritize your time. In other words, sometimes, things go seriously sideways.

This particular time, it was my husband getting a breakthrough case of COVID-19 right in the middle of back-to-school. The subsequent reprioritization required that I race to Jersey City at 9 am over a national holiday weekend so our two te…

One of the incredible side effects of owning a dog in the time of AirPods is that I get to walk Aspen, our super-athlete in the form of a German Shorthaired Pointer, while listening to podcasts and Audible. As in life, some are better than others. And some are so timely, helpful, AND informative that I feel that I need to share them. This is one of those. 

One of my go-to podcasts is called "Tests and the Rest." Amy Seeley and Mike Bergin, colleagues and hosts of said podcast, recently interv…

Sometimes what you most need to do... is stop

I was reminded recently of how ceremony, ritual, and tradition can be just what we need to take time for reflection, time to feel, time to stop the relentless adherence to the almighty to-do list in our burnout culture. Milestones – great and small and in-between – arguably deserve more of our attention.

Our daughter’s path to attend medical school began years ago; preparing for and applying to med school is akin to an extra year-and-a-half of co…

Hello !

Do you ever experience feelings of Back to School churn or am I the only one? (I tell myself I can't be alone on this.)

When July's long summer nights start to shorten and get cooler as we slide into August, the churn gathers energy. Forms, physicals, new notebooks, and whatever is left on the summer bucket list — it all has to go on the calendar now lest I find myself again in a shoe store over Labor Day weekend trying frantically to find a pair of school shoes that even fit my teen. …

Recently I had to re-establish a hard boundary with one of my brood. It hasn't been easy or pleasant, nor do I expect it to be moving forward. However, as I have wryly observed before, parenting is not for sissies. I am not going to go into the story here because I am just don't have the bandwidth nor the energy at the moment, and to be uncomfortably transparent, I'm still not sure I'm handling the situation appropriately and I'm still muddling my way through, as so many of us do. 

This latest …