Don’t beat yourself up

When we experience pain, we make it worse with the stories we tell ourselves about that pain. Those stories are the source of suffering. This is my biggest takeaway so far from the wonderful Here and Now program I'm doing through the Academy of Intuition. (Which I highly recommend.) Pain is inevitable. It's part of …

The pleasure of escapist porn

You guys, I am so into porn. No, not the sad cum-on–your-face variety. I'm talking AIRBNB LISTINGS. I'm talking Instagram accounts that show me LIFE IN THE HUDSON VALLEY. (Red Cottage Rentals I'm looking at you.) I am so into this shit. In some ways, the pleasure of selecting a cabin to rent in Phoenicia, NY …

Get some rest

I recently met up with a friend who is burned out from a demanding job, and worried that she's bringing the stress home to her family. "How long have you been feeling this way?," I asked. "Probably since January," she said. Oh, the month the asshat was inaugurated president? "I'm not sure that timing is …

What is real power?

(Good old Amanda, asking the small questions.) We're coming to you live from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, on a hot-as-summer May afternoon, where we're marinating in existential angst. Today's special: deep, probing questions about the nature of power. I've written about how my sense of power is tied up in my income. ("It eats away at your …

Is it immoral to move to another country right now?

The other day, in the wake of the news of Comey's firing, I posted the following on Facebook: It sparked a fire storm of comments. Several fellow parents wrote in to say that since the election they'd gotten their children passports and renewed their own, to which I replied: What are we waiting for? I …

Gimme a five

My daughter is five today. Five. years. old. Five years of mothering. Mother: A verb, meaning, "to love in agony and elation." FIVE YEARS. Oh she talks and my heart melts. Oh her sweet little hand. Her bottom. Oh how I sometimes still long for freedom. For quiet. For a morning of meandering in laziness and …

The perks of unemployment

    "Congratulations on your unemployment" I was walking my dog, Clover, in the middle of the afternoon yesterday (something you can do when you're unemployed), when a neighbor stopped to pet her, and we got to talking. "Do you work from home?", my neighbor asked. "Well," I hesitated, because for so many years I did work …

There’s no shortcut to happiness

It's become increasingly apparent to me that I am always looking for a shortcut to feeling happy. We all are, right? Booze, drugs, social media 'likes' — anything to give us a quick hit of dopamine or a way to dull the pain. My vices aren't obvious. I guess I'd categorize them as a mix …

I’ve given up on losing the baby weight

It's official: I've given up on losing the rest of the "baby weight." She's almost five, now, by the way, so I guess it's really the "child weight" — it arrived when I was pregnant but stuck around to see the little one grow up. Can't blame it for sentimentality. Happens to the best of …

Exploring the space between

When I was spent and dumb in the first weeks of motherhood I started listening to a meditation series from Deepak Chopra. Sitting on the weathered wooden deck of my parents' rental home in Maine, I earnestly absorbed his instruction to tune into the spaces between my thoughts. My imagination conjured what those spaces would …