Children & Family

May 11 through 17 is Mental Health Awareness Week, and if you have been waiting for a reason to check in with yourself, this is as good a one as any. Here is something worth knowing: mental health is not a thing you either have or do not have. It is more like a dial than a light switch. Most of us are somewhere in the middle most of the time, managing stress, navigating relationships, trying to keep things together. The goal is not perfection. The goal is awareness. This year

April is National Stress Awareness Month, which has been observed since 1992. The original idea wasn't to pile on. It was to get people to stop treating stress like it's just part of the deal. And yet here we are. Most of us have gotten very good at functioning under chronic stress. Too good, really. We adapt, we adjust, we keep going, and at some point the stress stops feeling like stress and just starts feeling like life. That's worth pausing on. The first quarter of the ye

There is a moment that comes up again and again in my work with women. Someone is talking about a pattern in their life, something that keeps happening in their relationships, or a feeling they cannot seem to shake, and somewhere in the middle of describing it, they pause. 'That sounds like my mother,' they say. And then, quietly: 'Who sounds like her mother.' That moment of recognition, that is what we are talking about today. What Gets Passed Down Without Anyone Meani

You have probably heard that phrase before. You cannot pour from an empty cup. Maybe you have even said it yourself. It sounds wise. It sounds true. And yet. Most of the women I know are pouring from a cup that has been empty for years. They have gotten very good at it. This week I want to talk about emotional labor, because I think it is one of the most important concepts for understanding why so many women feel depleted, and why so few of us talk about it honestly. What