a few observations

When you’re the one in the family who isn’t a serious hoarder, you always end up hosting your hoarding family for the holidays.

It’s important to teach your children how to manage their thoughts, to become their own best friend, and to cultivate a positive outlook. Especially a kid who veers toward anxiety. The earlier you can offer coping tools, the longer s/he has to develop those life skills while in your care.

It doesn’t matter how much you care for someone if you constantly feel stressed out in a relationship with him. You have to care enough for yourself to mind your own feelings.

Children should receive comprehensive, positive sex education that gives them the tools to speak their needs. More than being told to “just say no” to sex or drugs, they need practice developing the skills of how to say no, yes, faster, slower or a little to the left. I’m grateful my school has a solid curriculum and instructor(s), and I’m even more grateful to know that I’m surrounded by a community of parents who will take those conversations to the next level with their children.

It’s terrifying to raise a daughter in a world where an enormous population of girls’ genitals are still mutilated in the name of purity, where school dress codes are designed to make sure girls are not a distraction to boys, where colleges have no clue how to handle rape allegations, where lawmakers seem hellbent on standing between the reproductive decisions women should be making only with their doctors and loved ones, where slut shaming remains a rampant reminder of just how alive and well our gender-based double standards are, and where women are so frequently harassed or flamed for making feminist statements online. I have to regularly take deep breaths and ground myself just to stay sane, much less try to make sense of this crazy world for her.

Side note:  Jennifer Lawrence is right. The criminals who stole private images from her and other celebrities’  cloud accounts should be prosecuted for the sexual violations they’ve committed, just as they would be prosecuted if they’d been caught having stolen your banking information.

I’ve been seeing an acupuncturist. The resulting bruises on my body might suggest I’m the victim of a physical or sexual assault. On the other hand, cursing aloud at my practitioner does not seem to faze him. Therefore, I’m not sure whether to report him to some sort of authority or ask him if he’s single.

I can’t imagine dating someone with the perspective that birth control is a female’s responsibility, especially after children. If a man has sired as many children as he intends to sire, I firmly believe he should be willing to commit to that decision and have a vasectomy. Not everyone has to agree with me on this; likewise, not everyone has to date me.

Finally, when a young person comes to you and confides that she is bi-sexual and you say, “all right,” you have to wonder if you’ve under-reacted or dismissed the enormity of this thing she is telling you, while you simultaneously wonder about whether a young person should so readily embrace what might be a label, particularly given the fluidity along a spectrum that seems inherent among females. But the important part of responding was this:  “Regardless of whoever you choose, the important thing is to learn to build healthy, communicative, loving and supportive relationships.”

And OMG Bill Cosby!

All of these are things I’ve been thinking about in my long absence — and probably some are topics on which I’ll write more. But for now, let’s hold this space…this space in which some of these issues are just so big and overwhelming and controversial that they are difficult to wrap my head around. And let’s acknowledge that some are pithy or playful and, I hope, gave you a bit of a laugh.