From the category archives:

structure

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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Could Yoga Really Have Led Me to the Americans with Disabilities Act?

September 18, 2008

Yoga, I have always thought, saved me from the law.
I became a lawyer, in the narrative I have set up of my life, because I was blind to my heart.  It was the path my mind led me down, the safe, manageable world of knowledge and surface communication and clear organizing principles.
Sure, I told myself [...]

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Forget My Mind — I Lost My Cell Phone

July 24, 2008

Actually, “lost” is mother-of-a-toddler code for, “I left my cell phone in the pocket of the shorts I wore to the pool with Jake and ran it through the washing machine.” Raz-r phones, I probably don’t have to tell you, do not like being run through the washing machine.
When Mike first announced that he [...]

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Monday Mornings, Sleeping Late, and the Clash of the “Should Do’s”

July 14, 2008

Jake slept in this Monday morning. I did too, for a while. Until Mike told me it was eight o’clock and suddenly my eyes were wide open like a Bush voter who finds out for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. One minute I was dozing blissfully, [...]

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MIA Part Three: Not Doubting Your Path

July 11, 2008

Sometimes there are good reasons you don’t have time to, say, write a YogaMamaMe post for two weeks. And I don’t mean “good” in the “eat your spinach, it’s good for you” sense of good. I mean good, like good for my soul, happy, fun.
I mean, to get to the point, Coon Dog [...]

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MIA Part Two: Learning Who You Are

July 9, 2008

So another reason I was missing in action for two weeks (even though, I say again to the empty echo-chamber of a deserted readership, I don’t think anyone really noticed): a visit to Louisville for my grandfather’s funeral.
Sad as this sounds — and much as the past couple of posts might, um, bring the [...]

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Mothers, Daughters, and “The Eye of the Tiger”: How a Bad Song from 1982 Moved Me Closer to Stillness

June 16, 2008

On Father’s Day morning, when I started the car in the parking lot of EarthFare (Asheville’s local Whole Foods-ish place I love to shop for groceries even though we really can’t afford it), I had one of those delicious moments that happens when I hear “Eye of the Tiger” on the radio.
Immediately, it was 1982. [...]

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At Least Now I Can Eat Dinner at a Normal Time, or Something I Actually Can Control

June 10, 2008

Most people probably consider it an obvious choice to eat dinner with your child. It is, after all, the foundation of all those sitcoms we grew up with, isn’t it? Remember Richie Cunningham … eating hamburgers at Arnold’s restaurant with The Fonz. Or … the hijinks taking place in the otherwise [...]

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Is There Such a Thing as a Graceful End to Vacation?

June 9, 2008

I can’t say I remember ever having had a graceful end to any vacation in my life.
I tend to be the type who gets stuck somewhere between the utter relaxation that is, to me, the whole point of a vacation (soldier on, you exploring, traveling, learn-something-on-vacation types, but do it without me) and the pressing [...]

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Booster Seats and Boosting Yourself

May 25, 2008

Thursday’s life lesson took place in the unlikely location of a Babies R Us in a strip mall off the exit just past the Asheville Mall, second-rate real estate where the stores squat sadly as if aware they have been banished.
I entered already full of the anxiety large, glowing box stores induce in me, determined [...]

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Letting My Child’s Inner Beauty Shine Past the Tests

May 20, 2008

At Jake’s school this morning one of his teachers showed me the developmental evaluation they had filled out for him. It was a standardized list of questions — a la “Can the child pick up a Cheerio between his thumb and forefinger?” — in such categories as Communication, Gross Motor Skills, Fine Motor Skills, [...]

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A Sick Boy and a Lesson About Intentions

May 17, 2008

I really didn’t mind too much when I got the not-unanticipated Please Pick Him Up call on Wednesday from Jake’s school.
True, I had picked him up early on Monday and kept him home all day Tuesday, which I really thought ought to have scored me a few points with the teachers. And he had [...]

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Fixing Everything, Even When You Can’t, or How I Learned to Diffuse My Energy

May 7, 2008

Today my acupuncturist spent a lot of time diffusing my energy. And it got me thinking.
I was probably not thinking what you are — Acupuncture! Therapy! Yoga! This gal spends an inordinate amount of energy searching for the mindfulness in motherhood! And is maybe a little bit crazy to boot. But, [...]

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Surrendering When You Can’t Decide How to Put Your Child to Sleep (or How to Make Some Other Important Parenting Decision)

April 23, 2008

The worst part of lying awake in bed at 4:30 this morning listening to Mike’s deep sleep breaths was not knowing if I’d done the right thing.
I’ll bet we all have that one area of parenting that refuses to yield a clear course of action. No matter what we decide, we find ourselves wondering [...]

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Being Open to Change

April 2, 2008

I was stuck in the back of yoga class again yesterday.
This is not my favorite spot, for no particular reason, other than habit. I like being in the front, in my own world, diving into empty space instead of someone else’s mat. No doubt books (or at least lengthy articles) could be written [...]

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Breaking from Break, Part I: Why We Are Allowed to Take a Break from Being Mothers

March 31, 2008

It began before I left to take my friend Sam to the airport at the end of his weekend visit. Panic. Anxiety. An unsteady feeling, as if the floor beneath me had disappeared, leaving me spinning my legs in an ethereal nothingness.
I thought about what was causing this feeling half an hour [...]

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How Getting Knocked Off My Feet Helped Me to Grow

March 25, 2008

Yesterday I surveyed the field of unexpected obligations suddenly stretching between me and my YogaMamaMe website and declared myself okay. Getting published, I realized, had become too much of a goal, and I should feel deep gratitude to the Universe for throwing a bunch of other things at me as a reminder that I [...]

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How Not to Start Out as a YogaMama Blogger

March 19, 2008

Yoga and my life frequently seem to be at cross purposes.
Yoga is about slowing down, being in the moment, focusing on exactly what you are doing and nothing else. It is about not pushing, about slow and steady change, respect for one’s limitations, and gratitude for the beauty within us all. It is [...]

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