The spiritual journey I am on is very important to me. I do my greatest work not from a place of anger, from pain, from sadness, or from hate, but from a place of love. I understand that people across the world are not in a place to choose love. I do not judge those…
Category: Life
The Problem with the Happiness Debate: Divided We Fall
“Do we have a ‘right’ to be happy?” I recently saw this question pop up on Linked In. It is attached to a post about “self help experts” and “positive thinking speakers” and their perpetuation of this entitlement myth called “happiness.” Wait. What? We’re actually fighting over whether people have a right to be happy?…
Change the World: Let Kids Be Little. Let Them Be Wild
As summer is fast approaching, I am working with students day and night who are stressed out about finals, stressed out about grades, stressed out about performance, competition, comparison, and acceptance. What they should be stressed out about is this: nothing. Nothing is worth taking away kids’ precious sleep, their sanity, their hopes, their lighthearted…
Happiness Is All About Perspective: Shift Happens
I do not, nor have I ever, buried my anger. I wear my heart on my sleeve and my fire in my eyes. My husband will say to me, “I thought you would be upset about that.” I look him in the eye. “Honey.” I say. “If I was upset, you would know it.” Twelve…
Having a Bad Day: It’s Not Them. It’s You.
It can happen to the happiest among us. And it can happen for any number of reasons. You didn’t get enough sleep. You haven’t gotten enough sleep in a week, a month, a year! Your kid is sick. You started a new job and you’re feeling overwhelmed. You’re PMSing. Anything can turn a potentially good…
Free Range Parenting: I Am Just a Guide
I have always been an advocate of free range parenting, the parent who provides very wide boundaries within which children are free to roam about and explore. And for the most part, for six years, I have been a free range parent. Sure, I hovered a lot when Celaya was very small. It took me…
Infinity War. Marianne. The Myth of Limited Resources
My student walked down the hallway of the tutoring center with me tonight, my last student of the evening, a regular of mine. He sat down at my table across from me, and we begin discussing his upcoming final essay for his Freshman English course at the local community college. “Tragedy of the Commons,” he…
Unschooling: Realizing I Don’t Homeschool After All
We learn what we want to learn. Period. Children can be in school, behind reading level for years, and suddenly, like magic, they catch up. Or they never do. And you know what it depends on? Whether the kid wants to learn to read or not. My very first experience with trying to force my…
Addicted to Yoga: An Analogy for Life
I don’t know what exactly called me to yoga this time around. I had tried yoga before. A really good friend of mine has done yoga for years. I have seen the transformation in her, especially as a fellow mother of three who has undergone three cesarean section operations. I have seen her stomach flatten…
The Advantages of Homeschooling Are Myriad
A couple of weeks ago I told Carlos I’m interested in living a more mobile life. I have been looking into the city of Tulum, Mexico, and almost everyone knows I love San Clemente and the lifestyle here where we are currently vacationing and where we spend at least a week each year. One of…