I teach a class on diversity and pyschotherapy, and we explore the impact of privilege. We talk about inherent privilege based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and lack of disability. But yesterday, I was reminded of another one. I call it dad privilege. Dad privilege is when you have a repairman in your home all day, watching you interact with your kids, cook dinner, do laundry, empty lunchboxes, etc. And then your husband comes home in the evening and you leave for an appointment, and . . .

This post was sponsored by TomTom. I have struggled with direction my whole life. Not the existential kind of direction (although that's true, too) but the practical kind. I am constantly lost. I have no internal compass whatsoever. When you're about to hit a pinata with a blindfold on, and someone spins you around to disorient you first? That's my baseline. I've been this way my entire life and have tried a myriad of strategies to fix it, but there is just something broken. It's like a . . .

I've been keeping a big secret from the kids that I've know about for a year now . . . This summer, we are going on a family safari with National Geographic to Tanzania. I've been waiting to tell the kids because, as kids are, they are impatient with time. If I told them too early, they would get frustrated and their excitement would wane. We are about a month out from the trip and I decided now was the perfect time to reveal the trip. I decided to make them clue cards that would slowly . . .

I grew up in the church. My dad was a theologian and preacher. My husband was a pastor for almost a decade. I’ve seen the beauty of the church but also the dysfunction. Like any group of human people, church communities are unique and imperfect. It’s unfair to make broad strokes about all Christians based on the behavior of a few. But at the same time, when unhealthy patterns emerge, it’s important to talk about them so that these patterns don’t maintain damaging behaviors. One pattern that has . . .

Last week I gave an update on our house, and the messy and dusty state of things. I thought things were finally looking up. We had gotten past the point of sanding drywall, and I had hired a housekeeper to come and clean every surface. We mopped the floor, we cleaned out the closets, and we wiped out every kitchen cabinet. The kitchen was finally installed and I thought that an end to our gritty existence was in sight. The kids were really excited because the kitchen was installed with a blue . . .

My grandfather (or Pop-Pop, as we called him) was generally a gruff and grumpy guy who disliked being around people and noise. He lived with our family during his last years, an arrangement and a phase of life that was extremely difficult for him. But he loved Letterman. So much that he would go to bed at 6pm, set an alarm for 11:30, wake up and watch Letterman, and then go back to sleep. This was despite us repeatedly offering to set the VCR timer for him. I could often hear laughter coming . . .