I Want to be Like My Kids....

You know as your kids are growing up, how you wonder if or when you'll see traits like yours? Not the physical stuff so much, but do they have your sense of humor, or your knack for math or writing or logic or music or do you share a love of sports or art?  Then you might feel that special connection that is so very rare.

Well, I'm experiencing the opposite feeling lately. I'm not looking to see if my kids are like me...I look to see how I can be more like them. As they've blossomed into young womanhood this summer, at 16.5 and 20, they've are the kind of people I only could ever wish or hope to be.

My older daughter is leaving for a semester abroad this coming weekend.  She's just sort of fearlessly going about her planning, making a list of the countries she intends to hit, the places she will see, the things she will do. She doesn't know one other person in her program, will be building a new group of friends from scratch in another country nowhere near her home, an ocean separating her from everything she is used to. I don't know that I ever would have had the courage to do that at 20..maybe not even now, at 46.

My younger daughter worked this summer as a day camp counselor for the first time. She shepherded forty (yes, 40!) sixth graders through a busy day at drama camp, dealing with everything from everyday issues like girl sagas and boy problems and who got the best part in the camp show to meatier, thornier issues like kids with body image issues and emotional issues and family issues and a co counselor who quit midway through the summer.  She handled it all not only with grace but with a sort of adult-like view that I wasn't even aware she had developed.  I could never have been as she was, calm, cool, under so much pressure at that age -- and she LOVED it.  She hopes to be asked back next year as a counselor again.

So how did this work out -- me getting the kids I never could imagine being but would love to have been, and me getting the joyous reward of watching them be this way?  I don't know...but I'm sure glad I did.

Depression is not just a Bummer

"I'm depressed," we tend to lament pretty easily on any given day or week -- at least I know I've done this. Maybe we're low on funds in our checking account or we didn't get something we wanted or the dishwasher is on the fritz -- again. But with the suicide of Robin Williams earlier this week, I can't help but think we've lost the meaning of this very important word -- depression.

Depression is not just a bummer. It's not that blip in your day or your week. It's not that you don't have enough money to go to dinner with your friends, or that your car needs $500 worth of repairs or that you have to make due with last winter's coat. Yet every day we utter the words I'm depressed about these sometimes small or annoying or frustrating things.

Perhaps we should save the word depression for true, serious depression. Just so that we can honor and acknowledge what it is.

For people who've never been depressed, it's hard to imagine the truly gray pallor that seeps over the life of the depressed person all the time. I once read an article about a woman who was so desperate to get out of her decades-long depression that she allowed her doctor to perform experimental brain surgery to try to figure out exactly where in the brain the depression was coming from. As he touched various parts of her brain -- while she was awake, no less -- she was to tell him if she noticed anything different.  And at one point, she did. "Who turned the lights up?" she asked. She felt the pall lift.

People with depression don't want to be depressed. They also just can't snap out of it. They can't enjoy the things you and I enjoy -- the movies or a good meal or time with friends and family. They don't understand that you want them to live when the depression tells them not to. They don't understand how it will hurt you if the depression tells them to end their life. They are not being selfish. They are suffering beyond what any of us can imagine.

We need to live in a world where it's okay to talk about depression and what it really means. We need to live in a world where it's okay to be depressed, and no one will tell you just stop. And let's decide to live in a world where we don't say that we're depressed when we're just having a bit of a bummer of a day. Let's honor depression for everything it is. And everything we wish it wasn't.

Paying it Forward

When I graduated from college twenty four years ago (gulp!) my parents gave me ten shares of IBM stock as a gift.  (My father was a lifetime employee.)  I really didn't think about it at the time, just put it away and forgot about it.

Until two years ago. That's when my older daughter was entering college.  We had saved for her to go, diligently putting money into a 529 every month since she was just a little girl and barely reading. It was hard to believe, back then, that she would ever go to college. She was still wearing a size small dress and was scared of dogs.

But grow up she did. And during her senior year of high school, as she applied to college, my husband and I knew that even with that diligent saving, we were far behind where we needed to be to make up the difference. We knew that we would need to pay for eight semesters of college for her, and then turn around with no break and pay for eight semesters for our younger daughter. And every year, college tuition, room, and board jumps about four per cent. So where was the rest of the money coming from?

I remembered the stock.  My husband and I decided we should sell some of it. I didn't know how many shares the ten had morphed into, but I figured, it was something at least. So little by little over the last two years, we've drained that account, filling in the deficit we face every August and December when we need to make a payment.

Yesterday I got a letter in the mail that the account was closed. Apparently we've used those entire ten shares up (and whatever they've morphed into) this week. I was a little sad -- we'd held onto that stock for twenty four years, after all! -- but mostly, I thought it was so cool. My college graduation gift had gone to pay for my daughter's college education.  What could be a better way to spend it? Now, just to get through the rest of college payments without it. . . .

Are the Teen Years Carefree?

I was talking with a group of friends recently about whether teenagers are carefree. A couple of people thought teenagers could be, and are, carefree. Two of the mothers of teens in the group insisted that their own teen years had been completely carefree.

I'm going to be honest -- I don't buy it.

The teen years are some of the most stressful years of a person's life, in my opinion.  It's not that you can't have fun; sure, there are fun times. There are dances and parties and friends who matter and conquering hard subjects and visiting college campuses and learning to drive. But there's so much more than that.

There's going through puberty.  There are mean girls and boys. There's gossip. There are first kisses and boyfriends and girlfriends and getting dumped and falling in and out of love. There's the need to get high grades and ace the SATs.  There are teachers who suck the life out of you and a school day that starts before your body and brain are biologically ready to start. There are parents who nag you, rules that don't make sense. There's the very point that adolescence is a time of great change, and in every great time of change, even our happiest, like when we get married or have a baby, there is inevitable stress.

It's not all on the surface, either. Even the happiest, most contended, apparently well-adjusted teens struggle with feelings of identity, and there are not all conscious thoughts. Who am I and why am I here? Is it better to be a child or an adult?  What do I want to do with my life?  What am I good at? What am I not good at?

I have yet to meet a teen who has never had a blip of misery throughout his or her teen years.  It may look all cushy, with parties, and friends, and summers off from school, but to me, being a teen is one of the most difficult things you can be. What do you think?

The Most Valuable Summer Job

My daughter is working a few jobs this summer, saving for her semester abroad in the fall.  One is a paid internship where she's learning about non profits, writing, communications, graphics, event planning, volunteerism, and all those good things.  One job is driving a disabled man to and from his school and group home. One is babysitting two young children each evening for a few hours between their camp time and the time their parents get home. Which do you think is the most valuable?

I bet a lot of you would pick the one in the office.  At first glance, that makes the most sense. She's working in an professional environnment. She's picking up business contacts. She's working on important projects. She's learning about what life will be for her in two years -- if she decides not to continue on with graduate study after college -- or three years -- if she finishes her graduate degree -- and she enters the work force.

But I don't pick job number one. I also don't pick the job two -- it's great that she's helping this disabled young man -- and his parents are friends of ours -- and she's making a little extra money, but this is only a couple of days a week and really is all about the driving.

Yes, I pick job number 3.

In this job, my daughter's seeing a lot of actual life right in front of her. Both parents are professionals with high powered jobs. They live and work within a couple of mile radius, and they have two young children about eighteen months apart in age.

My daughter is seeing what happens when you have a two career family. She's seeing the parents basically always trying to keep their two kids' care straightened out. They drop their little ones off early for day care/camp and then my daughter picks them up at 5:00.  She brings them home, cooks them dinner, tries to work with them in the work books their mother wants them to use during the summer when school's not in session, plays with them for a bit, and bathes them.  Their harried mother or exhausted father comes home anytime between 6:30 and 9:00, when the children are ready for bed or already asleep.

In between, they touch base with my daughter throughout the day. Is this one going to be home early enough to bring the kids to their t-ball game?  Is that parent able to pay my daughter for the week? Who will get the extra car seats out of her car for the weekend?  Who has the longer day? How long will they get to see their kids for that evening?

My daughter grew up in a very different household.  When she was very young, I worked half time in New York, half time from home, and I remember the frantic feeling when the babysitter called at 5:00 am after her son had gotten sick overnight and we couldn't figure out who was going to stay home; how guilty I felt when I didn't cook dinner because I was too tired when I got home, and the myriad of details about basic life that I worried about all the time.  When my daughter was three, I left my job, pregnant with my second girl, knowing I needed it.  I was fortunate, and I'm clear about that. However tight we've been financially all these years, at least I had a choice.

I never felt as impassioned about my career as I did about raising my children. Some of that may have been the time I was raised in, or how I feel about work and life in general, or a whole other host of factors, but for me, the two simply weren't going to mesh.  For so many others, this issue is age-old, and now as my daughter prepares to become an adult in the world, she's having to ask herself, or at least think about, what she wants and how she might go about getting it.  She says she definitely wants children, but she also definitely wants a career.  She will work hard over the next however many years to establish that career, and then a time may come when she is ready for children. It's how to blend the two that will come into play.

That's what this babysitting job is very handy for. She's seeing first hand that something will likely have to give. Will it be her sanity? Will it be the children? Will she wait and hold off on kids so she can enjoy a career first? Will she have them and hire someone full time to care for them, and then, will she be the kind of mother she plans on being?  Will she have two kids instead of three, or one instead of two? Will she career for a while and then stay at home for a while and then career again? Will it be okay if she misses t-ball games or that she won't see her kids for more than a few minutes some days? That's what this job is teaching her. Everything will come down to choices, and some will be choices she won't like to make.

I support whatever she chooses to do -- work outside the home, work inside the home, career, no career, kids, no kids....I've got her back.  But I do feel badly for her: the choices she will make, as a modern woman with a career and a family (if she decides to go that route) will sometimes be painful or agonizing. They are not decisions I've had to grapple with in a long time.  I don't know the answers.

Some Dates You Just Don't Forget

Today is my high school boyfriend's birthday. He is 48.

I haven't seen him in twenty five years, not spoken in twenty, but I still think of him fondly, and always on his birthday. We dated for about three years after we met at music camp one summer. We went to separate high schools and lived in towns thirty minutes away.  We had a "trunk line" on the "teen phones" in our homes because we didn't want to pay the outrageous long distance bills talking for hours every night racked up. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

The break up was typical -- months of on and off, push and pull, until it ended in that ugly way teen romances seem to end. Badly.

I wasn't the best high school girlfriend; I know that now. I was demanding and pushy and wanted him to give up a lot of what he loved for me. I wanted to spend every weekend with him (and after he started driving, that was pretty easy) and I wanted...well, everything  I tried to give back as much as I gave, and I did love him. He was sweet and funny and taught me a lot about how to be a nice person. I'm afraid, though, that I was not equally as good to him as he was to me.  In the end, frankly, I was just plain awful.

Still, after college, we chatted a bit, he even came to my wedding. (See, wonderful guy, right?) But we never remained friends, which I suspect is my fault.  I am Facebook friended with his sister, and we had lunch a few months back, and it was so nice to catch up with her. I feel like I still know his family, so I enjoy stories about his relatives (creepy, right?), though we really didn't talk about him.  His sister and I have a bit in common, too, and it's funny now to be friendly with her when, as high-schoolers (the two were only seventeen months apart) they fought bitterly and often, and my boyfriend complained all the time about her hysterics and drama, so we were anything but friends, then.

I probably sound like a crazy, insane stalker. I'm not, though. I'm happily married to my best friend/husband, have two healthy, happy daughters, and a writing life.  I feel lucky to be where I am, and I don't ever look back and think What if,what if?  I just think, Oh, I hope he's well. I hope he's happy. I hope life has been good to him. And I admit that I also sometimes wish I could apologize to him for being the psycho girlfriend.  It's thirty years later, and I'm still sorry.

Separating

There comes a time in a baby's development when she begins to realize she's not truly just part of her mother but that she's an independent person, that she is her own entity.

I'm beginning to feel like this.

For the last twenty years, I've been a mother before everything else. In the very beginning of motherhood, I was a working outside-of-the-home mom.  I juggled a career as an editor and had a young daughter, before Internet, before email...dragging large manuscripts between my work and home in a sturdy bag, working from home some days, in the office on others.  It became clear to me when I was pregnant with my younger daughter that I wouldn't be able to do both, at least for a while. My husband and I weren't sure if we would be able to afford life on one salary but we decided the wear and tear on my was too much...almost exactly seventeen years ago, I quit my job.  We decided we would re evaluate after a year. . .

Year turned into year turned into year and I became a dedicated stay-at-home mother. Most everything I've done, even though I'm also a writer and a friend and like to go to movies and out for dinner, to discuss politics and social issues, and to read, has been about my daughters. I was active in their elementary school activities.  Then we transitioned into the tough teen years, with me being available for every time they needed to talk, or to think out loud, to drive them to activities, to advise them on classes, to pick them and their friends up, and then teaching them to drive themselves....and now, it's almost over.

Yesterday I took a day to be not-a-mom.  An author friend and I went into the city to a book launch, where people we knew were celebrating the publication of their book.  We had lunch,we walked around, we met people we had only social media-ed with. Of course I thought about my kids, but my pressing thoughts were not about where to be to pick one up or how to help one through a crisis or school or...anything, but writing and reading and books. I felt like an entirely different person.

My older daughter is home for college for the summer; the younger is going into her Junior year of high school.  In just a couple of short years, daughter number 1 will be launched, fully, and daughter number 2 will separate herself to college.  I'll still be their mom, but I won't be the appendage I am now.  But I'll be a person.  And a writer. And someone I may, some days, not recognize.

When Perfect People Turn Out Not to be Perfect

A reader once commented to me that one of the hard parts of The Opposite of Normal, for her, was reading about the rabbi and some of his failures as a parent. (I don't think this is giving anything away if you haven't read the book yet!)  She was bothered by the idea that she had such high ideals about rabbis, and she didn't like to think of them as not being "perfect" or at least, shining, in an area they are supposed to guide us in, like parenting.

Recently, someone I trusted to be, maybe not perfect, but certainly someone I thought was on my side, who I looked up to, surprised me with doing something I thought was wrong.  Now, while I didn't expect her to be perfect (or maybe I did), I did expect something other than I got when we were dealing with a thorny issue.  

It's hard when there are people in your life who you greatly admire and you find out they are not always so admirable, but it happens to all of us, I think. This isn't the first time I've been disappointed by someone I've always looked up to or admired, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

It's important for me to remember that no one is perfect.  Even our strongest leaders, people whose opinions we value, people who are supposed to be our greatest examples -- parents and grandparents and teachers and clergy and doctors -- they are all fallible. When we put our head in the sand about their imperfections, we hurt ourselves.  I was hurt by this person I thought was on my side, and turned out, kind of wasn't, but I learned from it.  I reminded myself not to be so one hundred per cent trustworthy of some people. I usually have good instincts, and I need to be a little more wary, I suppose, because while I have good instincts, I can put all my trust in some people when I shouldn't.

I hope my reader learned from The Opposite of Normal that yes, rabbis make mistakes, even in their own families, and that's okay. And I learned from my experience. Imperfection is perfectly reasonable. Perfection is not.

Impatience!

I am an impatient person.  I've never been good at waiting for something to happen, waiting for people to do what they say they will do, waiting for the next step in a process.

Two things have helped my impatience: Motherhood and being an Author.

Everything in the publishing world works at a snail's pace.  Finding an agent, getting an offer from a publishing house, receiving the contract, and the actual publication of the book all generally take months and years.  As an indie author, I bypass a lot of this stuff, but I can't avoid certain aspects of the process.

I finished my new manuscript last week.  When I say finished, I mean, the first draft, plus my own first edit, are both done.  I've decided on a title -- The Place We Say Goodbye -- and I'm feeling good about it. The next steps are hearing from the beta readers and my editor's work.

I sent my manuscript off to three beta readers last week. Beta readers are the people you choose to ready an early version and then give you honest feedback about your manuscript to make sure it is working the way it's supposed to.  Who you choose as beta readers can change from manuscript to manuscript and indeed mine do. I try to find people who are heavy readers in my particular genre and who may have more than a passing knowledge of my topic.  Of course, none of my beta readers gets paid, and I'm so grateful to them for being willing to read for free; I know they all have other jobs and families and lives; they are doing me a huge favor. I expect that it will take them a while to read for me. Still, though, I get antsy the minute I send the manuscript out. Now I have nothing.  

I try hard to fill the time. I read more than usual. I try to sleep a little later. I bake. I work on the book's blurb -- those few paragraphs that will try to sell the book for me. I think, in the most general terms, about my next book. I should look at this time as special. My brain is getting a break from thinking about my characters and my plot and who is going to do what next and how I'm going to solve their problems.  But instead, I just feel, well, impatient.

I know two of my readers haven't even started the manuscript yet. I don't blame them. As I said, they are busy. But part of me wants to go to their houses (which would be hard to do since one lives several states away and the other lives on the other side of the country) and shake them and sit there and force them to read.  Of course, I am calm and cool and collected when they tell me it might be "awhile" until they start or they will get to it "soon." I smile and nod and say yes, of course I understand, take all the time you need.

Then I sigh and go try to entertain myself with something else.

Celebrating 20: Getting Out of the Teen Years

Our society likes to choose some birthdays as more important than others. We fixate on 1 (for the parents more than the kids -- Yay, you've kept your baby alive for a year!) 13, (You're a teenager! -- Why this is something to celebrate is beyond me!) 18, (the age of majority), 21, (the age when you can drink legally), 25, (It sounds grown up), 30, (Your childhood is over), and then every round numbered birthday after that -- 40, 50, 60, and so on. We also like 65 (the beginning of senior citizenship) and anytime a person survives long enough to be 80, 90, or 100. My aunt is turning 80 next week.  I couldn't find one funny You've made it to 80 card.  They were all somber, like, great, you survived thus far but now you're practically dead.

But I want to focus on another special number that none of us seems to think about. 20. That's right, TWENTY. Twenty is sandwiched between 18 (You are now able to vote, be sentenced as an adult, get married, play the lottery, and a few other things) and 21 (You may now get your liquor from a bartender, as opposed, to, say, your dorm friends.)  Twenty, as far as I can tell, is overlooked, and for no good reason.

My older daughter is turning twenty next week. I'm planning on celebrating big.

Twenty indicates the teen years have come to an end.

Though the teen years technically start at thirteen, they definitely pre-start, for girls at least, around 11, maybe 11 and a half, definitely by 12.  Somewhere in there, your daughter begins to think you know nothing, that she knows everything, that spending an afternoon at the mall is better than spending it with you, that her phone is somehow her most important possession. (Okay, maybe as adults we continue to think that.) So by twenty, you've now been through nearly a decade of this, not to mention raging hormones, contemplating what you want to do the rest of your life, college applications, the drama of middle school (UGH!) and the drama of high school (UGH! again).

Being a teenager sounds pretty cool when you're twelve. I remember thinking I was hot stuff as I went from 12 to 13. But then...being a teenager goes on for far too long.  You're a teenager forever. You've shed more tears than you can ever remember doing before. You've learned to drive (and maybe crashed the car). You've made (sometimes) unreasonable demands on your parents and friends and teachers, and you've graduated to adulthood.  But you still have '"teen" after your age two years into college! Two years after you earned the right to vote! Two years after your parents could no longer -- at least technically -- tell you what to do.  And then, finally, you turn 20.

Twenty sounds infinitely better than 19. It signals adulthood, for sure. It signals that you are no longer in that horrible not-quite-adult-like-place-but-expected-to-act-like-an-adult phase.    Twenty is, like, the first time you might actually be taken seriously. By at least one person.

In your twenties, you graduate from college. Your career starts and may take off. You may very well get married, have your first child....You go from barely two years out of high school to maybe a homeowner. Living completely independent of anyone else. And did I mention...finally being taken seriously?

So rejoice in 20! Celebrate it as a special birthday. Even if there are no greeting cards specifically for it.

Happy Birthday to my very favorite 20 year old.

How a Story Starts -- and a Sneak Peek at my Next Book

I'm always in awe of those writers who are able to write from some place or time that is totally foreign to the here and now -- those novelists who go back to a time they've never lived in --like World War 2 Nazi Germany or the Civil War Era.  Without ever experienced it, they're able to transport us to a place and time that feels as real to us as yesterday in the grocery store might. Or what about science fiction authors who create, literally, an entirely new universe, or Dystopian YA writers who are able to make us believe that teenagers are killing other teenagers?

Nope, that's not me. For one thing, I absolutely hate research. For another, I'm not creative or imaginative enough to pull off anything like that. For me, I like to write what I know.  That's not to say that my books are representative of my actual experiences -- I've gotten that question a lot, actually -- certainly not. I'm not my main characters, and most of what happens to them is not what has happened to me. But I inform their stories through my life, so, for instance in Child of Mine, when midwife Katie went through infertility, I was able to draw on my own infertility experience, and my love of all things pregnancy and birth.  In The Opposite of Normal, I was not Hannah. I did not lose my mother when I was ten. I didn't have a Rabbi for a father. But I did go through adolescence, and I do question my religion, the idea of God, and I am Jewish, and those things helped me draw on what I needed to do for the book.

I just finished the first draft of my new novel, not yet titled. (Hopefully soon! I'm working on it. I happen to be terrible at titles.) But again, I've drawn on life experience to write it.  People have been asking me what it's about and here I think I can finally talk about it, after being tight lipped for a long time. It's about a thirty- two year old autistic man who can't communicate. He can't talk, he can't use a device, like an ipad, to help him express himself, he doesn't use sign language. And he's one of the main characters.

Again I've gone to my own life to help inform my writing. Obviously, I am not autistic (nor do I have an autistic relative). But one of my very closest friends has a 22 year old autistic son, one who does not speak and has no means of communication. I've known this young man his entire life, and even before, when his mother announced her pregnancy at her husband's 30th birthday party 23 years ago.  I remember her excitement over the pregnancy and the baby, and then the devastation as they discovered what was wrong with him when he was diagnosed at age 2.

As we get closer to publication, I'll let you know more about this novel, but for now, that's all I'm going to say as I wade through editing and revisions.  Know that this book is very personal to me, and that I'm doing my best to capture the struggle of a family dealing with this condition.  If you have a story in you, let me know.  I'd love to hear what you would want to, or like to, write about.

What Facebook Told Me

I met Sue (not her real name) about nineteen years ago. We were both actively volunteering for Resolve, the infertility organization. She had a three year old son; I had a one year old daughter.  We both had served in nearly every capacity in Resolve on the state level, counseled hundreds of couples about alternative routes to becoming parents, spoke at dozens of events, run support groups and everything else the organization needed.  Eventually we both sat at the board level, sharing responsibilities. We both loved what we were doing.

We became fast friends.  Once a month, Sue and her husband and son came to my house for dinner, or we would go to hers. One time when we went to her house, she showed me the Internet and instant messaging on AOL.  I was mesmerized by it. I wanted it for my house, too, so I could talk to Sue that way, instead of paying the long distance phone bill, and because it was cool. (Yes, then we had long distance bills. It seems so long ago and yet doesn't seem that long ago at all.) She showed me, even, how she had created fake name profiles so she could spy on other people. She was ahead of her time with this Internet thing. She could see it would be the future.

We lived about thirty minutes apart. We talked on the phone once a day, at least. We shared the joys and tribulations of raising our kids, our luck over being able to parent after infertility, the pain we saw as others went through it. We traveled together across the country to national Resolve events. One Saturday a month, I would get her and drive to our Resolve meeting after picking up bagels for all of the other board members, we chatted the whole way, never running out of things to talk about.

She decided to adopt another child; I was going through infertility treatment once again to have another baby.  She supported me when I went through a heart breaking miscarriage; she'd been through four. I cheered her on as she searched the country for a pregnant woman who would be a match, and helped her steel herself for months of uncertainty when she found a birth mother.  I went to visit her just days after she brought her daughter home.

But something in the friendship started to crack. We were jealous of each other, I think, for different reasons. We began to fight. There were tears and lengthy phone and instant message conversations. We misunderstood each other. We hurt each other. Eventually, one day in late 1998, she hung up on me and never called back. I wasn't sorry. The friendship had taken its toll; her anger at me was seeping into my daily life too much. I had two children by then, a baby who needed to be nursed and a pre schooler who needed my undivided attention.

Over the years, I thought about Sue from time to time. I go to the mall near her house occasionally, eat at some of the restaurants there with various friends. I would wonder if I was going to see her. Would it be awkward if we ran into each other? What would I say? I would think about that for half a minute as I pulled into the parking lot and then forget about it.

Once in a while, what with Google, I would search her name. Nothing would ever come up. It seemed odd, and I would think about that for half a minute, too, knowing how much Sue loved the Internet, understood its power way before anyone else did, and then figure she was probably using some false name, like she had on Instant Messaging. Then I would forget again.

Last week I decided to look her up on Facebook.  She wasn't there. She definitely would be on Facebook, I thought. She would love it. She would love posting pictures of her kids. She would love everything about it. So I typed in her kids' names. I knew those and their birth dates, too.  I found her son but he hid his friend connections from public view.

I found her daughter. The last time I'd seen her, she'd been a baby.  Now she is eighteen, getting ready to graduate high school.  I clicked on her daughter's name and her main page popped on the screen. Her banner shot was of a cemetery, a grave marker bearing my friend's name, her birth date, declaring her as the best sister, wife, mother, and friend, and a date of death.  She died eight years ago at the age of forty six. Her daughter made a reference to her mother being out of pain, at least.

Sue had always been a hypochondriac.  She thought every pain signaled a heart attack or cancer or some other impending doom.  Somehow, I guess, she was ahead of her time not only with the Internet, but with whatever illness killed her, too.

Living through fear

At last night's Seder, I sat with a friend who I hadn't seen in several months. About a year ago, she'd decided to have a form of gastric bypass surgery and since then she's lost about ninety pounds. A couple of weeks ago, she had skin removal surgery to finish off her journey. She said the entire thing was about facing her fear.

That got me to thinking. I am a pretty fearful person and I have let fear stop me from doing things I've thought about, or wanted to do.  And she was right when she said that people who don't do things they know they should, or need, to do, or want to do, don't do so because of fear.

I want to be a more fearless person.  Or at least a person who makes choices less because of fear and more because they sound like good choices.  I'd like to learn to live more through my fear and less because of it.

It's easier said than done.

My daughters are very fearless people. How they got this way, I don't know, because that's the opposite of me.  My older daughter is planning a semester abroad in the fall, choosing a country she's never been to, with people she has never met, to live in and with for four months. On top of that, she's also planning to travel through Europe, to a bunch of countries she's never been to.

My younger daughter decided to take on a new activity this past winter called Winter Guard. It's dancing with flags, rifles, and sabres to music with a group, precisely matching each others steps at the exact same times. She had never danced before. The Winter Guard in our school comes with a very strict, no nonsense, tough coach, as well.  But she wanted to do it. She said she would be sorry if she didn't at least try it.  It wasn't easy, at times, but she hung in there and handled the sport and stress gracefully for four months, and she liked it enough that she thinks she will do it again next year.

So it seems like it might be my turn to learn to live through my fear.  If I'm anything like my friend or my daughters, everything should turn out just fine.

It's Autism Awareness Day!

Today is Autism Awareness day. It's meaningful to me because one of my closest friends has a son who suffers from this condition.

Most people have a general idea of what autism is. They know a person can have trouble with communicating, understanding others' expressions and emotional cues, and other developmental milestones. But most people have never seen the full range of autistic disorders, and some may not realize how devastating a more severe case is.

I like to think of autism as an wide open umbrella.  On one side of the umbrella you may have some individuals or who appear quirky -- they may have serious fascinations with things that most people are not fascinated by, they may not look you in the eye when they speak, or they may be unaware when you're uninterested in what they have to say.

Then there's the whole middle of the umbrella, where individuals may develop language very late and then not speak well or much at all, or may repeat words (echolalia) or not have much meaningful speech. They might not be able to go to regular school or be away from family or progress naturally or easily into adulthood.

Then there are people all the way on the other side of the umbrella, like my friend's son.  He is 22 now, and doesn't speak. He lives in a group home, and during the day he attends a very good program that's teaching him independent living skills and helping to find out what kinds of work he can do, supervised, to contribute to society.  He is sweet and loving, is great at puzzles, and is always happy to watch Thomas the Train videos. He can nod yes. He has epilepsy (a not uncommon byproduct of autism) and tends to be obsessive compulsive and anxious.  He is eager to please and curious, happy to be with his parents, family members, and friends. He's athletic. He's shy.

He's so much more than his autism, but when you see him, that's what you see.  It's hard to miss. He squeezes his fists together and grunts and groans and screeches.  He relies on his caregivers to know his favorite foods, habits, and soothing techniques.  Inside, though, he's a person, like all of us, and he has feelings, like all of us, and I bet, like all of us, he just wants to express them.

In honor of World Autism Day, I hope you'll think about my young friend, and his family, and how much this condition affects everything, every minute, every hour of their day.  I hope you'll remind yourself that autism is not just a quirky little thing.  And then go hug your kids.

Teaching Our Kids to Advocate for Themselves

One of the biggest lessons I hope my kids have learned from me over the years is how to advocate for themselves. This was not something I learned to do as a child -- as a  product of the 70s/80s, my role was to learn to be submissive and silent in classrooms and workplace a like, and over the years, I was sexually harassed, treated unfairly, and paid less than others. I believe much of this could have been avoided if I'd been taught from the beginning to advocate for myself appropriately.

Today I witnessed my sixteen year old doing just that. I won't go into what happened, but I was present as she made a case for herself, presented evidence, relied on notes she had written when she was not in the heat of the moment, looked people in the eye, used humor to diffuse tension, and politely but firmly made her boundaries known.  It was one of the best moments I've had as a parent.

It did not go perfectly smoothly. And the situation is not likely be be remedied exactly as she might like.  But she learned valuable skills -- how can I argue for myself without pushing inappropriate boundaries? How can I persuade someone that what I'm experiencing is true and accurate? What evidence will I need to make my position clear?  But more importantly, she learned: I do matter. What I feel and experience matters.  I am not just making up what happened to me.  And, crucially, even if this does not lead to satisfaction for me, it may for other people.

In sharing my excitement over this morning, a friend expressed concern of what would happen to my daughter because she had spoken up.  I think this is where, sometimes, we get it wrong. We can't always worry about what will happen. Yes, we should take precautions against retribution -- especially physical or mental harm -- but we need to teach our kids that it's okay to stand up against injustice. Yes, sometimes life isn't fair, and we need to accept that, and then sometimes, we need to check in with ourselves, and ask, can I really afford to be silent?  And if the answer is no, then we should not be.

Starting Up the College Search Process...Again

Two years ago, almost exactly at this time, my older daughter was trying to make her college decision. She was a senior in high school, and (I think) we had successfully navigated our first time college admissions process. She had a few choices, and then narrowed it down to two, where it stayed for some weeks before she ultimately decided, nearly at the last moment, and made her final choice.  I'm happy to report she loves her school, and for many reasons, it is the right place for her.

My younger daughter is now coming up behind her. She is a sophomore in high school, a good student, very active in clubs and activities.  Soon she will finish her sophomore year, and we're starting to talk about college.  There is something exciting about this -- though daunting, of course, at the idea of paying for another round of college -- to watch her beginning to make life decisions that will affect her forever.  It's fun to observe her thinking about it.

Yesterday when we got the 2014-15 school calendar, I told her if she wants to look at some colleges during fall or spring break, we can do that.  And in a few weeks, she'll be traveling to visit her sister at college for a few days to see what it's like, up close and personal.  Her sister's even scheduled a tour with other high school students so she can see what that's like.

We're trying to figure out when she can take her SATs next year. She's so busy that it's going to be difficult to find a time when she will have a few weeks to prep before taking them.  And Junior year, of course, can be overwhelming. It's the hardest year, academically, and she's choosing to take a heavy load.

I feel like I've learned a lot about the college admissions process since I went through it with my first daughter, and I hope we will make better, more informed choices this time around. Get ready, get set...a couple of challenging years ahead!

Going Best Seller on Amazon

Saturday started off much as any other day for me. I did my writing, read my email, played around online a little.  And checked my sales for The Opposite of Normal.

Friday I had done a promotion. I'd offered The Opposite of Normal free to anyone who wanted to download it to his or her Kindle.  I'd chosen the date about a week in advance and then sent my free download information to every ebook news outlet I could find, and there were a ton! All in all, I probably sent news of my free download to at least fifty or sixty outlets -- I never counted -- and then waited to see what would happen, fearing that nothing, in fact, would happen.

On Friday, thousands and thousands of people downloaded The Opposite of Normal for free. I was thrilled. I hoped that some of them would tell their friends this book was pretty good, or they would write a review, good or bad, or that they would somehow let me know what they thought of it.  That's where I thought the story would end.

But on Saturday morning, when the free promotion had ended and people had to buy again, I noticed that many, many people were actually buying The Opposite of Normal. And throughout the day, my numbers were not just creeping -- but flying -- upwards. By the end of the day, The Opposite of Normal was best selling in Jewish fiction, Jewish American Fiction, and Family Life Fiction. It also was very high in the overall Fiction category. Child of Mine (my first book) never got so high. (But, it, too feels the bump of The Opposite of Normal, and is being sold once again.)

Every time I logged on to see my number, I got a little nervous. What if it went lower? What if it didn't stay up there?  But indeed, it stayed nice and high all day. I sold more books on Saturday than I sold in the previous month, since The Opposite of Normal was first released.

Sunday things started sliding downward a bit, and since then, as well.  That's to be expected. But I'm still selling every day, and still I'm having quite good days.  Now I just have to hope that people will like it enough to tell someone else, to write a review, to reach out to me.  Ah, the life of an author...we write, we promote, we write, we promote....

That Cruel, Cruel SAT

Yesterday the SAT made the news. It's going to change formats (again) in 2016.  Too late for my kids -- one's in college now, and one will take her SATs next year -- but I paid attention anyway.

I have long felt the SAT to be an unfair test for incoming college students -- and not because I did so badly on it, which I did. (I will not tell you my SAT scores. This should give you an idea of the kind of hold the SAT puts on its test takers even decades later!)

To me, the SAT is not a test based in fairness. I happen to be able to afford the cost of SAT prep for my kids -- my older daughter took a class (at $600) for her prep. She felt it helped, though of course I don't know for sure because she never took the test without it. Still other kids in our very economically and socially diverse town can afford private tutors. Others can't afford anything and go in blind, or with just the ragged SAT prep books in the library.

I know a lot of very smart kids who do very well in school but not so great on their SATs. My older daughter graduated with above a 4.0 GPA, took Honors classes in a challenging school district, and has an incredible,  unmatched work ethic. She did okay but not probably where she should have been given her intelligence and focus.  I don't blame her for that. I blame the test.  Why are the reading passages so impossible? Why are the words ones we will never use in real life? Why is the math focused on math done, by many students, over two years previously? The College Board says it is fixing all of those things. Well, great. But I'm reserving my enthusiasm...because I'm not sure I believe they will be fixed enough.

Back to my daughter...

She wound up going to a very good college. They didn't care so much about SAT scores, seeing them for what they are. And I'm happy to say that two years after her acceptance (and now with a nearly perfect GPA in college), that more and more schools are putting less and less emphasis on this test, some getting rid of it entirely, others making it optional, others promising it will not make or break a decision.  I still see it being used to make scholarship decisions though, which makes me angry, and of course, many colleges still do have a minimum SAT they will take into consideration when making admissions decisions.  The SAT does not determine college ability or creativity or focus or drive.

Are we not putting enough pressure on our teens as it is? The college admissions process is already fraught with pressure most adults couldn't handle -- from taking as many Honors or AP classes -- as young as freshman year -- as possible, to making sure you're well rounded -- don't forget your sport, your clubs, your honor societies, your art or music endeavors, your volunteer work, your AP exams -- 4s and 5s only, please-- that I don't see we need an additional three hour test to decide whether the kids are worthy of admission to ANY college. Since the test has time and again shown to have problems, why do we keep doing it to them?

Who else wants to ban standardized testing -- SAT or ACT or ANY standardized testing -- from being a benchmark of the college admissions process?

The Hard Parts and The Easy Parts

Like many other jobs, being an author has its hard parts and its easy parts. One of the easy parts, at least last time with The Opposite of Normal, was writing the first draft. I pretty much sailed through that experience. (Unless I'm deluding myself and it was actually quite difficult and, like child birth and the resulting baby, the pain has been erased by the high of publication)

I'm working on my next book now, and I'm not having the same experience. Most mornings I've been dreading taking out the lap top to start.  I know what I want to do, though I'm not quite sure how I want to do it. My hands are not listening to me as I command the words to flow from my brain onto the screen.  I know where I want the book to go, but I keep wondering how I will get there.  This means that writing this time around is painful. Usually, for me, the first draft is the best part. It's the revisions that are horrendous.

I've heard other authors talk about this -- some books just flow and others don't -- so I know it's normal, but when they don't flow, frankly, it sucks.

When I'm into a first draft, I think about the characters all day. What are they going to do next? How will the plot go?  Who's going to get into trouble with stupid choices they make?  Imagine a bee buzzing around -- when the bee is many feet away and seemingly magically moving from one flower to the next to collect pollen, it's a nice scene that you can simply enjoy. But when the bee is loudly buzzing in your ear, annoying you, threatening you with a sting, your reaction is completely different. You want the noise, the pressure, the fear, to go away.

That's how I feel about this draft right now.  I want the bee to go away. Go back over there to the pretty garden so I don't have to hear your loud, insistent buzz.  Let me enjoy the nature scene from over here, where I sit with my book and my lemonade.

But the bee isn't listening. No, it isn't. It insists on buzzing in my ear, constantly, all day long. So I have no choice but to get the words down. Even if they are bad words. Even as I imagine having to rewrite entire scenes and chapters. Even as I wonder if I can carry off this complicated story, I am still writing the words. I sit down each morning and will the bee to buzz a little more quietly. So far, it hasn't.

When Boring Life Chore and Your Past Collide

Yesterday I brought my daughter's car to a NJ state inspection center. This doesn't sound like it would be worthy of a post, but hear me out.  There's a story in this.

I first started taking cars to NJ state inspection stations when I was a teenager. I had no idea what I was doing, of course. My first or second year, very early on, I had a terrible experience. One of the men running the inspection center was mean to me. He made fun of me for being clueless and he was gruff and frustrated, outwardly hostile when I messed up a procedure.

This has stuck with me, to this day, thirty years later. Every time I go to the inspection station, I get tense. I worry that I'll screw up. I worry that the guys there won't be nice. I worry that I'll mess up one of their seemingly specific directions.  So I make sure I have all the paperwork ready before I go. I try to be extra nice to the guys so they won't yell at me. And every time, it's no big deal. The guys are nice, or at the very worst, indifferent. (What a sucky job, really.)  The lines are never too long, and other motorists there for this annual boring chore chat with me about what I'm reading (as I always have a book with me) or about the weather.  It's over in half an hour, and the car always passes. (The kind of car I drove as a teenager didn't always pass, which embarrassed me. I would cringe as they put the fail sticker on, and then worry about how much it was going to cost to get fixed.)  So why do I still get all up in arms about this seemingly banal experience?

We remember the things that are painful to us, even if they're buried deeply, and in this case, when they're not buried deeply -- even if they are seemingly small or unimportant or we should know better to get over them.  We react based on those memories. I may be a 46 year old woman with a husband and two children to take care of, an adult who is an author and in control of her life, but I'm shaped by my experiences, some trivial, some not so much. Whether they come out in my writing -- as they sometimes do -- or they linger as a visceral reaction to something -- like tensing up before I go to the DMV -- they live on in me. Has anything like this ever happened to you? I'd love to hear.

On Tenacity

My younger daughter and I were talking about tenacity the other day. She's a sophomore in high school, recently turned 16, and she is one of the most tenacious people I know.  

I'm pretty sure tenacity is the quality people need in order to succeed in anything in life. It helps to be bright, yes. It helps to be quick witted and personable and all of those things. But tenacity. Tenacity will get you anywhere and everywhere.

I'm tenacious when it comes to certain things. I was tenacious in working towards having children, going through a whole lot of horrendous fertility treatments to get them. And definitely worth it. And I think I've worked tenaciously to get my books published. But tenacity as an overall quality -- no, I don't have that, not so much. I'm the woman you see reading in the corner, or talking to a friend at lunch. I'm the one who will always opt for an extra hour of sleep over pretty much anything else.

My daughter, though, she is the tenacious one.  She is tenacious in everything she does, from school work to performing in musicals to playing her cello to reading. She's tenacious in her friendships and in who she chooses to be her friends in the first place. She's tenacious in her conversation and in learning and in thinking. Everything she does, everything, is about tenacity.

Her tenacity doesn't always get her what she wants.  She has never been the star of the musical. She is not a straight A student. But it's the way she approaches life that makes me convinced she will be the one who gets it all in the end.  Because what she says she wants to do, she finds a way to do. And when she decides to do it, she does it until she no longer can.  She doesn't stop in the middle. She doesn't stop when someone else gets the better part or the better grade or a teacher (or, um, her mother) tells her she can't. She just does it.

So what do you think is the most important quality in order to be successful in life? I would love to hear.

Six Days!

Only six days left until The Opposite of Normal debuts! I'm very excited to share it with all of you.  It will be available on Kindle and as a paperback through Amazon.

This is my first independently published book.  Last time, my agent guided me through the process, and her literary agency did the publishing. This time, I've done it all myself. I hired my own editor, I worked with my own cover artist, I worked with a conversion company to convert my Word files to Kindle files, I did all my own publicity, marketing, everything. So it's all on me!

This is both good and bad news. The bad news is if you don't like it, if there are problems, if you can't access it on your Kindle, if the book doesn't come to you in the mail, if you don't like the writing, if you don't like the cover, if you find typos...it's all on me!  But the good news is that I made all my own decisions, that I've gained new skills, that I've made new author friends along the way....and it's been challenging, but fun. For someone who doesn't like change, who doesn't enjoy, but rather stresses at, learning new things, it's just a big accomplishment just to say I did it.

I chose to independently publish my book because I wanted control. I was a Production Editor in my former life -- meaning that I took a book from concept to bound book -- from just an idea that my publishing company wanted a book on X to finding someone to write it, to me doing all the editing on it, to helping our in house cover designer work on a cover, to marketing, to publicity...that was some fun stuff. I remembered those fun times when I worked on this book.

So get ready...get set....Write to me after you read it. I'd love to know what you think.

The Opposite of Normal is Coming!

When I was in fifth grade, I announced to my Hebrew School class that I did not believe in God. A hush fell over the group, and then one kid loudly exclaimed that was awful.  We never talked about it again.

It's thirty five years later and my feelings about God have grown and changed over the years. As a Reform Jew, I've been taught to question everything about my religion. And I do.

It's my experience, thinking about religion so much, and how it's impacted me, that started the shape of my new book, The Opposite of Normal. (It's out in just a week and a half!)  But I didn't want to write a book solely about religion. For one thing, I'm not interested in doing that. For another, I wanted my book to have many layers.  Religion -- specifically Judaism and Christianity, and how characters use their religion for both good and bad -- is just one layer.  The book is really about growing up, surviving the confusing teen years, as well as learning to live with grief and how not to let grief destroy your life.

I like to write what I know. I completely admire those authors who can step into other worlds, like the 1800s or some science fiction-y place a million years away, but I'm not that kind of author.  I like to write about (and, honestly, read about) contemporary women and families and relationships. I like to read about why characters make the decisions they do and then I like to think about what I would do in that situation. I want characters to feel real to me. That's what I try to do in my writing.

So the time for The Opposite of Normal is getting close. It's nerve wracking and exciting all at once. I get to hear how readers feel about the book -- and whether they like or it not, I have to take responsibility for my words.  Please let me know how you feel about it, either way.  And if you have a book club and want some home baked treats while we talk about the book, just let me know.  I'd love to bake for you and talk about it.  What you, my readers, have to say is what's most important to me. 

My Last's Firsts

My youngest child will be 16 in a couple of days.

This is so weird to me.

When we are parents, I think a lot of time we focus on our firsts.  Our first child's first steps.  Our first child's first words.  Our first child's foray into school.  Her first concert. Her first sporting event. It seems a big deal when that child does all of her firsts. And then she is first to go to college, and that feels gigantic.

Where does that leave the rest of our kids, specifically our lasts?  For me, as my last does her first of everything, it reminds me that this parenting thing is definitely time sensitive, and that it will end.  Not in the way that other jobs end, because, face it, they leave and still need us.  But that her life with me will end. And now that she's 16, it will end soon.

Lauren's firsts always sort of shock me. When I commented the other day that I couldn't believe she was turning 16, she rolled her eyes and responded that I say that about every age. That's probably true, but there's something about 16 that screams there's no going back now. Maybe it's the beginning of driving that makes it seem so final. Or how she's choosing her Junior Year schedule right now. Or that colleges keep sending her mail.  I don't know. But 16 seems a lot older than 15. (She says I say that about every age, too, and she's probably right.)

Lauren has always been my baby. She might cringe as she reads this, but it's true.  She nursed for a much longer time than my older one did.  She wanted me close by for much longer than my older one did. It took a much longer time for me to feel she was ready for Kindergarten. Who knows if that's just me dealing with her last-ness or really her? My mind messes with me.

Sixteen just seems so...impossible.  Like, Are you sure? I look at her and think, "Lauren is a teenager." I say it to myself to keep in my mind that she is one, not the baby I keep seeing.  That she is sixteen. No two ways about it.  

Everyone has "Stuff"

Everyone has stuff.  We just don't always share it with the world.

You know the family in your town with the perfect kids -- good looking, straight A honor students, president of every club, varsity sports? They have stuff.

The family in your town with a lot of money, vacations to exotic locales and owns the nicest house? They have stuff.

The Stay-at-Home Mom who is always prepared, bakes from scratch, is on every volunteer school committee? She has stuff.

The guy who always beats you out for promotions? Who bought his teenagers brand new cars for their sixteenth birthdays? He has stuff.

Lately I have a lot of friends going through stuff -- whether in their own lives, with their kids, with unemployment...

When you're going through stuff, it feels like you're all alone, that you'll never get through it, or that it's going to take a very long time, at least. And that can feel even more awful than than the fact that you're going through stuff in the first place.

Sometimes when you're going through stuff, you look around and think that other people -- those who look "perfect," those people you're secretly jealous of because they seem so perfect -- never go through stuff. But they do.  

There's not much you can do when you're going through stuff but remind yourself that it gets better. The new job will come, the kid will straighten out, the illness will improve.  So to all my friends going through stuff right now, hang in there. Brighter times are ahead.

Living with chronic illness

I'm kind of a private person, but lately I've been thinking that people might understand my life more if I talk about what it's like for me to live with Chrons Disease.

Chrons is a digestive disorder that can affect not only your entire digestive system (in my case, I'm affected from my mouth all the way down) but also other major body systems. In my case, it affects my joints and skin as well.  I was diagnosed with Chrons thirteen years ago, when I was thirty three and was at a low weight of eighty eight pounds, but I'd had symptoms for many years prior to that.  The only way to diagnose Chrons disease is to have a colonoscopy, and because Chrons patients have a higher likelihood of developing colon cancer, I've had four.  I am constantly anemic.

Chrons is a chronic disease with no real rhyme or reason why or how it strikes, other than we know it can run in families. (My aunt has it, too.)  I can be fine for a long time, and then get a flare up. A flare up will land me in bed for days or weeks, unable to eat, unable to function.  I have not been off medication at all for the last thirteen years. Until about a year ago, I took all oral medication.

There are a ton of medications for Chrons, but unfortuantely, most don't work that well, at least for me. For about two years, I spent much of the time feeling awful, and my doctor finally threw down the gauntlet.  She wanted me to start IV infusions.

IV infusions up the ante dramatically. They're a whole new ball game.  For one thing, they take up far more time than oral medication does, obviously.

Right now, in fact, as I type this, I'm in the hospital getting infused.  I come every eight weeks to spend a morning here.  It starts out with getting my vitals taken.  I have to swear up and down I haven't been sick because infusions are dangerous if you have been.  Then I have to "pre med," which means taking an an anti allergy and Tylenol to ward off effects of the infusion medication.

They set up an IV. I'm told I have great veins but it still hurts as they poke around, trying to find one that will work.  They run saline as my infusion meds are mixed at the pharmacy.  While the actual medication I take is a two hour drip, between all the pretesting and saline dripping and then flushing the line at the end, I'm here about three to four hours.

Infusions make me tired. I'll probably go home and take a nap this afternoon.  The medication lowers my immune system's ability to fight infection. This winter is the first winter on infusion, so I'm extra paranoid about getting sick, because I've been warned that a cold can easily turn into a hospital stay for someone on this regimen.

The infusions are helping.  For the last few years, to save me from the constant flare ups, I was almost constantly on prednisone. I haven't been on any prednisone now for four months, and I can count on one hand the number of days I've felt bad since the fall.  So they are worth it.

The UNresolution

Happy New Year!

I hope you rang in the New Year in whatever way you wanted -- whether at a large party or a small gathering, out on the town or in bed before midnight.  And I hope 2014 is wonderful for you. The launch of The Opposite of Normal is next month so I'm hoping 2014 will be a good year for me.

With the New Year always comes the discussion of resolutions.  People discuss their resolutions on tv., on Facebook, on Twitter, and everywhere else.

I think New Years' resolutions can be good -- a friend told me her New Year's resolution last year was to stop smoking -- and she did.  But generally speaking, I feel like New Years' resolutions are about resolving to do or be something we're just not -- and ultimately, we wind up feeling worse about ourselves when we're unable to keep the resolution.

A lot of resolutions seem to be about losing weight.  Now, if you're losing weight to save your health -- if you're morbidly obese, if you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, whatever -- trying to lose weight makes sense. But if you're ten pounds over what you'd like to be and have tried a million times to lose it and just can't, and you're otherwise healthy -- why not try to accept that you're not as young as you used to be, or that you're a really good person with the fatal flaw of eating cake a little too much -- and just not make that resolution, which come a month or two or three down the road is going to just make you feel bad?

What about being a procrastinator? It's one thing if you procrastinate to the point that you always miss your work or school deadlines. Yeah, you have to get a handle on that. But do you do your holiday shopping the day before the holiday? So what? Do you wait to clean your house until your guests are practically on your doorstep? That's not really such a bad thing. And it's probably inborn, so if you're doing it, trying not to do it may just make you feel awful about yourself -- for no reason.

I could resolve to do a lot of things.  I could keep my house cleaner, I could try not to be so cheap with my money, I could promise myself I would not watch so much mindless tv.  But these things are part of me. They don't hurt anyone else. So instead of resolving to change these bad habits, I'm going to resolve not be so hard on myself. To accept myself as I am. Who's going to join me?