That to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages--becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors..

We're never ready for the things that happen. When the big stuff happens, we're always looking in the other direction..

Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything..

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once….

How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?.

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can bar….

I didn't know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kiln dried..

I am an average mother in almost every way, so yes, much to my regret, I do yell at my children..

Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an ….

If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spi….

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so….

You have to speak your dream out loud..

I envy my dad and his faith. I envy all people who have someone to beseech, who know where they're going, who sleep under the fluffy white comforter ….

My readers often say to me, 'If we lived next door to each other, we'd be best friends.' That is precisely what I wanted to say to smart, funny, self….

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limi….

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a gam….

He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception….

We'll bury our mothers and fathers - shuttling our children off for sleepovers, jumping on red-eyes, telling eachother stories that hurt to hear, abo….