Motherhood

Motherhood changes people in ways that are difficult to explain until you live it yourself. Whether you are raising toddlers, teenagers, adult children, stepchildren, or supporting others in a caregiving role, becoming a mother shifts your priorities, identity, emotions, and understanding of love. For me, motherhood has been humbling, exhausting, funny, overwhelming, and deeply meaningful all at once. These are the biggest lessons I’ve learned from being a mother. 1) Motherho

A blog about photos and what the story they tell.

This past weekend, I visited my college. It was a real college visit for my youngest, and while I’ve been back to campus a handful of times since graduating nearly thirty years ago, it was the first time I was there in an official capacity: as the parent of a prospective student. As I walked the campus, I realized I wasn’t just revisiting my college years—I was imagining what I hoped my son would carry into his own, IF he decided to come here. A mother and her son stroll acro

Thanks to social media (and sometimes my children), I occasionally manage to catch onto a trend before it becomes outdated. This is not a skill I had in high school, so I consider it a midlife achievement. Yesterday I was scrolling Instagram and came across a post about a 23-year-old woman from India, Sithara Jahan. She asked her strict parents for permission to go on a girls’ trip to Kashmir—something she was absolutely sure they would say no to. And surprisingly… they said

In August, when we dropped off our first college freshmen, I expected grief. I knew the house would feel lonelier, the dinners quieter. I didn’t anticipate the house being cleaner-but I’ll admit, that was a welcome surprise. The emotional shift of fall felt inevitable, as predictable as the leaves changing color and dropping from the trees. What I didn’t expect were the January blues. A serene winter night scene with a full moon illuminating a snow-covered landscape, where ba

As we head into Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about what I’m truly grateful for. The list is long, but here are a few things that rise right to the top: 1) Hormone replacement therapy. The conversation around perimenopause is finally changing, and honestly, I think we can thank Gen X women for that. For a generation branded as apathetic, we sure banded together when it came to demanding better care. After 2002, menopause management basically evaporated. Women were tol

I became pregnant with twins in late 2006 after one round of IVF. My husband and I knew we were lucky to get pregnant so quickly and while the thought of twins was a little overwhelming, it was still very exciting. Pregnancy was great. I was 30 years old (which carried a certain sense of maturity, no?). I had graduated medical school in 2002 and had a resounding four years of clinical experience. That made me an expert right? I was well versed in each trimester of pregnancy.

Since the moment the twins were born, a part of me knew adulthood loomed. But to be honest who is thinking about your kids going off to college when you are covered in explosive diarrhea and cleaning formula from the neck folds of your spitting child. In fact, at that point college would have been a welcome reprieve from sleep training and the 5pm “witching hour”. When M was 4, she came into our room in the middle of the night sobbing. The week before we had driven past UT Au