From the category archives:

inner peace

What Wonder Woman and I Have in Common: It’s Not What You Think

July 6, 2010

For those of you who somehow missed the news, last week Wonder Woman unveiled her new look.
When I saw her picture, two thoughts flashed across my mind in quick succession:  First, she dresses a whole lot like me.  Second — and this is the one that stuck, overcoming any embarrassment the first ought to impart [...]

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Girls’ Night Out

June 1, 2010

When my friend Teri invited me to a girls’ night, my first idea of what to do was panic.
There was a time when I was all about the girls’ night out.  When I believed in a sort of aggressive-defensive-sexy Woman Power and cosmopolitans and thinking my friends and I looked like the gals in Sex [...]

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Full Circle

April 19, 2010

I’ve been writing YogaMamaMe since Jake was younger than Lily is now.
This makes me think a lot of things:  How quickly time passes when you have kids.  How scary it is to watch time pass so quickly, especially when you have kids.  And how I seem to be repeating myself.
Take last night, for instance.  I [...]

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I’ve Been Coming Full Circle Lately

March 29, 2010

I am, frankly, not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse that a piece I wrote almost exactly two years ago more or less sums up my night last night.  It is called — in a feat of clarity — How Being Kicked in the Face By a Baby Reminded Me That [...]

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When a Fresh Perspective Requires a Fresh Perspective (Don’t Look at Your Butt Redux)

January 14, 2010

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.
You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a [...]

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I Can Cook! And Lots of Other Things You’d Never Know I Can Do

December 1, 2009

By the end of our Thanksgiving meal, life as a mother, as someone who is (can it only be?) eight-and-a-half months postpartum, and as a still relative newcomer to my new home — it was all beginning to seem manageable, pleasurable even.
And then Ellen turned to Mike.  “You and I should have monthly Iron Chef-like [...]

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The Co-Sleeper Is Gone … And Time Marches On

November 30, 2009

Next to my side of the bed there is a large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards.  On the other side of that large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards there is room to open the drawers on the left side of my dresser.  In between there is space for my discarded shoes and socks to breathe without having [...]

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Not Everything Is Easier the Second Time Around

September 15, 2009

It is more than likely that I will spend pretty much the rest of my life debating whether Lily is such a patient, generous soul because I was in yoga practicing vasisthasana right up to the day before she was born or because, as the second child, she is doomed to my “been there, done [...]

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My Refuge

April 6, 2009

On Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be invited to the dedication of a lovely meditation space in downtown Asheville, the WriteMind Institute.  And even more lucky to have a mother-in-law in town and an infant feeding schedule that allowed me to attend.
It felt pretty darned great to take a shower, put on real [...]

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A Brief Return to a Past Life, or How (Really) Did I Get Here?

March 6, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Mike handed me a book that had come free to his workplace.
“I doubt it’ll be very good,” he said, “but it’s a memoir about going to Columbia Law School.  I thought you might be interested.”
Maybe it’s the buddha-like peace that has descended on me as I prepare to give birth.  [...]

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When the Glamour Is Gone: How a Pregnant Mother of a Toddler Watches the Oscars

February 24, 2009

Like Kate Winslet, I, too, used to practice my Oscar acceptance speech in front of the mirror when I was eight years old.
But I don’t any longer.  Instead, last night I propped my swollen ankles up on a few pillows, threw an old baby blue blanket over my wriggling belly, and polished off the organic [...]

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My Taxes Are Done, So I Guess I’m Ready to Have a Baby Now

February 22, 2009

I finished my taxes yesterday as Jake napped on the couch and the last hour of Waitress unwound on TiVo.
I say this not to brag but to point out that I am now ready to give birth.
I have repeated it many times over the past several weeks:  “No, I’m not ready.  I haven’t done my [...]

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Am I Completely LOST or Would Any Mother Choose the Husband She Thought Was Dead over the Three-Year-Old Child She Knows Is Not?

February 12, 2009

Is it just me?  Am I the only one who’s still in a state of disbelief over what the writers had Sun do?
Maybe it’s the pregnancy.
Normally, I don’t get too wrapped up in the motivations of television characters (unless they appeared on The Wire — oh, Randy, I still mourn for you).  I mean, I [...]

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Can I Make My Child (or Anyone Else for that Matter) Happy?

January 21, 2009

Jake has just discovered the concept of righteous indignation.
As in, “How dare you comb my hair for me!”  Only expressed in howls of unhappiness perfectly calibrated to get on my last nerve.
Or, “Don’t you dare fill up that bathtub!  Don’t even mention the word ‘tub’ to me!  And certainly don’t ask me why I am [...]

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Trusting the Nostalgia (Even When You Should Be Embarrassed by the Songs You Are Listening to on the Radio)

January 14, 2009

I am awash in nostalgia these days.
Certainly it has something to do with the impending transformation of my status into “mother of two.” One child, Mike and I agree, is an accessory. Two children is an adult family. Who can approach such a spectre without a slightly longing glance back at the [...]

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My Toddler Teaches Me When to Say “I’m Sorry”

January 5, 2009

Jake has picked up a rather impressive and useful new habit.  He now frequently says, “I’m sorry.”
The thing is, I’m not entirely certain whether he’s saying it when he’s the one who has something to be sorry for.  More often, I fear, he’s merely pointing out my own lack of social graces.
When, for example, I [...]

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Can a Sense of Self Come with Pink Polka Dot Boots?

December 9, 2008

Jake has been wearing his beloved pink polka dot boots pretty much non-stop for over a week now.

We have engaged in successful negotiations about removing them for bed time and bath time (for which he even removed his swim diaper the other night, suggesting he is finally over the traumatic poop-in-the-tub incident).  But otherwise, on [...]

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Giving and Receiving Toddler Style — In the Bathtub

November 21, 2008

Jake took a bath last night for the first time in a week.
This fact is notable for three reasons.  First, he is generally quite fond of the tub, so a one-week boycott is a serious thing indeed.  Second, the fact that I was able to ease him back into the tub wearing a swim diaper [...]

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Just Let It All In

November 19, 2008

I experienced a whole new way of thinking at the end of yoga class yesterday.
I’d spent the past several days mulling over how I wanted to approach writing about continuing toddler-inspired sleep interruptions; guilty, crying morning-afters; plummeting four-season temperatures; and that frustrating in-between period where the choice between too-big maternity clothes and too-small normal person [...]

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The World Has Shifted

November 5, 2008

My baby will be born in a world where an African American man is President.
My twenty-two-month-old son will grow up knowing nothing but a President who is black and a Governor who is a woman.
Overnight, everything has shifted.
My children live in a much better world than the one I grew up in.

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