by Jessica Towns Last summer, I took my daughter Ravenna to a toddler gym class. Children were clambering like termites over elaborate play structures, each with an anxious parent on the floor below. Ravenna ran fearlessly into the action and began to narrate every detail. “Climb stairs…throw orange ball…my turn…jump?!” A father in the class turned to me and said,…
by Meghan McMackin This is a four-part story in which I recount the miraculous tale of how parenting cured me of perfectionism, and how, through photography I’ve come to embrace the beauty of the present imperfect. Part 1: The PLAN Before our first child was born, I did everything I possibly could to prepare. I took my prenatals, read…
by Tracy Cutchlow, Author of Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science I remember trying to get the real scoop on parenting, good and bad, before I had a baby. “It’s hard,” new parents would say, and then quickly paper over that tiny admission. “But of course I wouldn’t trade it for anything!” It sounded suspicious to me. Even…
Hi. My name is Zach, and I’m a parent. If that sounds kind of like the introduction you’d hear at at 12-step meeting, it’s because that’s kind of how I feel about parenting. I’m addicted to it. I can’t help it. I can’t get enough of it. Sometimes I hate it. It might ruin me. But it’s who I am.…
My journey to becoming a parent has always been intertwined with my fight to survive Acute Lymphoblastic Lymphoma – an aggressive blood cancer I was first diagnosed with in May 2011 when I was 25 years old. Back then, I was not planning to have children immediately but I dreamed of becoming a mom one day. I knew chemotherapy could…
By the time my daughter Ravenna was seven weeks old, I had mastered parenting. Confident in my ability to meet her needs, I decided it was time for our first mother-daughter day out. A local outdoor mall boasted a beautiful new women’s lounge with ample space to nurse and change diapers. Perfect. I packed the kitchen sink into the diaper…
We were a young family that moved from Israel to Montreal with two girls’ ages 8 and 10, and it was our 3rd winter in one of the world’s coldest places. Winters in Montreal are very well known where the temperatures drop way below the 0. They say there are two seasons in Quebec, Canada: Winter and Maintenance. Winter can…
Have you ever done something accidentally? Like maybe you accidentally signed up for 2 year magazine subscription to Women’s Health even though you know you’re never going to look like the woman on the cover, or maybe you accidentally befriended someone who is super annoying and now they will never leave you alone, or maybe you simply, accidentally, spilled your…
In Oregon this summer, my husband and I hiked into a cave, a lava tube where tourists in sandals descend into the damp dark and freeze their hilariously unprepared butts off in the 40-degree cold as they stumble a mile into true blackness. Oh my gosh. Here it is. Of course. The perfect metaphor for parenting. It doesn’t matter how…
It all begins by blaming yourself. For weeks, you’ll rack your brain, trying to pin point the exact decision you made that ignited your child’s prematurity. Was it something I ate? It must have been that last minute business trip plane ride? Days, weeks, months, entire seasons will go by and you’ll still be waiting for your child. You’ll forget…