Watching your kid hit, kick, bite, headbutt, hair-pull, or in any way hurt another person is pretty much the worst. Even worse than the worst: when your kid keeps doing all that crap for months, years even, despite doing every damn thing you can think of to get it to stop. This was my kid,… Read More Is your kid a hitter, kicker, or biter? Read this.
It’s been a long time. I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing here, and my overall happiness factor has suffered as a result. This is a time when my overall happiness factor needs bolstering, given the doldrums of winter and staring daily into the belly of the beast of our current president. It’s hard… Read More On hope lying dormant, then sprouting
On New Years Day, I sat in the hard shell of a chair at the laundromat. I alternately felt fine and so broken that I wondered if any of the other launderers could tell. Did they see how my insides trembled as I struggled to get the washing machine handle to lock? Finally, the metal… Read More Motherhood, trauma, and a washing machine
My parents are conservative Christians who voted for Donald Trump. My brother-in-law is a Sudanese Muslim immigrant who voted Hilary. My sister and I are liberal feminists. Despite the fact that just about every political fault line runs through our small family, we chose to be together this Christmas, and we’ve been talking politics. Any… Read More Christian, Muslim, Trump-supporting, Pantsuit-wearing, Black, White Family Talks Politics Over Christmas
It’s rare for me to read something that changes my mind about an opinion I’ve argued publicly, but that’s exactly what happened when I read Ruth Whippman’s new book, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks. I tore through the first few chapters while trying to help… Read More "America the Anxious" book makes me a better feminist
Perhaps you remember my rant-of-a-post last year about gratitude, and those little clementine oranges I drew on with a sharpie to drive the point home. Well, I’m still sick and tired of gratitude, and how it’s routinely prescribed as a way to avoid tricky, socially-unacceptable feelings. And I know lots of you are over it… Read More Thanks to you, "Gratitude Can Bite Me" is an Elephant Journal Editor's Pick
I don’t know your family. Or your many well-thought-out reasons why you don’t want to hang out with them and their crazy opinions, especially after this election. Or maybe you’re super stoked for Thanksgiving with The Fam. Either way and regardless of your politics, I’m guessing that it’s pretty tempting right now to hole up… Read More Talking across political divides or Don't cancel Thanksgiving
There have been some changes on the home front. Radical changes. Distinctly woman-liberating changes. Behold. Feminist Home Improvement #1: A photo posted by An Honest Mom (@anhonestmom) on Sep 21, 2016 at 7:56am PDT //platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js An aside: Some would argue that even categorizing a dishwasher as a woman-liberating machine is sexist. Isn’t it equally liberating… Read More Feminist Home Makeover
Sometimes you’re lucky enough to read something that opens up a place inside you that was tight and closed before. You walk away from those words to a world with a bit more spirit and texture. That’s how I felt after I read this piece by Frieda Kipar Bay, an herbalist, mother, artist and educator… Read More What happens when we watch
This one goes out to every mother who has ever felt lost. Over it. Wired and exhausted. Overwhelmed and broken. It also goes out to every mother who has felt at the top of her game. Winning. Like her kid is the bees fucking knees. Perhaps, once or twice, you’ve felt trapped by motherhood. Or… Read More Motherhood is all of this
Stephanie Mackley 