I did a big chop of my hair today. Big for me, anyway. It wasn't something I wanted to do, but found it necessary.Over the past year, I have been struggling mightily with hair breakage. It has been frustrating and humbling, because I've always had long hair and definitely have some identity wrapped jo know that. Since turning 40 my hair has gone really gray and it is extremely fragile. I am finding it difficult to be able to both cover the gray style and style it the way I like (flat iron . . .

Last month I talked about the work that the Center for Youth Wellness is doing to address the effects of stress and trauma in the lives of children. I wanted to take a deeper dive into the concept of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). ACEs refer to childhood experiences that harm the developing brains so profoundly that their effects last into adulthood. These events, and the resulting stress, can cause chronic disease, mental illness, and violent behavior later in life. Childhood . . .

It’s tax day today, which means over the past few weeks I’ve been gathering all of my papers up to send to my tax person, because at the ripe age of 41, I still don’t know how to do this myself. So I chuckled to myself when a friend shared this tweet today: It’s gotten me thinking about about how odd some of our priorities are in terms of education in this country. Why doesn’t everyone learn to do taxes in high school? Why do I know how to solve a quadratic equations while a 1040 Form . . .

This post was sponsored by Monroe Shocks and Struts Driving in the car with kids is not without it's challenges. Especially because, as a parent, car safety is a huge value. You want to get from A to B with the least amount of distractions possible, but kids can make that more difficult. Here are a few of my pet peeves when I'm driving with the kids: 1. When my kids act like it's a restaurant. I swear, we can be at home for hours, where there is plentiful food in the fridge, and we get . . .