For my 60th birthday, my children did something I didn’t know I needed and now can’t stop talking about, partly because it was thoughtful, and partly because I spent an entire morning wearing a tiara in public like a woman who had either just been crowned or recently escaped supervision…

We’ve gone from being individuals with personalities and interests, to neatly labeled groups with shared characteristics and assigned flaws. Boomers are this. Millennials are that. Gen Z is… well, I’m still trying to figure that one out. But what I find more interesting than the labels themselves is how firmly people define themselves by what they will never become.

There’s a familiar conversation that happens whenever I go out to eat with certain people in my life. It begins the way most dinner plans do. “What do you feel like having tonight?” “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” “Really, anything is fine.” “You pick.” “Whatever’s easiest.” This is meant to be helpful…

The word oxymoron comes from two Greek roots: oxys, meaning sharp or keen, and mōros, meaning dull or foolish. Put together, the word itself is a contradiction – sharp-dull – making oxymoron an oxymoron. It first appeared in English in the 1650s, which means for centuries…

Life is shaped like a horseshoe. Or maybe a parabola, depending on how you did in high school math. Either way, there’s a point in life when we start looping back to something that looks suspiciously like our college years: living in a small, safe space where someone…

When I was younger, I thought adulthood was a finite destination. A glamorous point on the map where I’d have a fully stocked, organized spice rack, a working knowledge of how to prevent breakouts, and the ability to make small talk at parties without sweating through my shirt…

We just celebrated Thanksgiving in America, and I struggled a bit with my thankfulness this year. I won’t go into the details, but sometimes the ebbs and flows of life…

Full confession: I don’t always read every page of the novel I’m reading. Sometimes I flip to the final chapter. Or I’ll skim through a list of names in a mystery novel to see who’s still alive by page 150. (If my favorite character vanishes, I start slowly backing away – emotionally…

I first became interested in teaching small children how to write during my undergraduate work as I trained to be an elementary teacher. In the 1980s, the teaching of writing was shifting in a new direction. Influenced by educators like Donald Graves and Lucy Calkins, the focus moved away from rigid rules, drills, and worksheets and toward a child-centered approach.

I can still see my boys, one under each arm, squirming to get a better look at Frog and Toad – for the 87th time. One had peanut butter stuck to his cheek, the other had his toes wedged under my leg like he was strapping in for a rollercoaster. They knew every word by heart…