Do you feel like you hear about anxiety in kids and teenagers more than ever before? I just don’t remember hearing about my friends or classmates dealing with anxiety when I was growing up.  Granted, I know there was considerable stigma surrounding mental health back in the day, so surely there was plenty of it happening, considering all the brown plaid that parents were dressing their kids in, and I guess we didn’t hear about these struggles because people just didn’t talk about it.  The truth is, anxiety does exist more nowadays - especially with our ONGOING health crisis - but the ..read more

This post originally published on Sammiches & Psychmeds Mockmoms in December 2018. Because sh*t like this seems to happen in real life every.single.year, we’re bringing it back for your reading pleasure. Trouble continues in a local neighborhood, where a mother is accused of allowing her daughter to walk down the street carrying her elf with bare hands in front of all the other children. It all began last week when the incoming-text-notifications of eight moms’ phones and that of one stay-at-home-dad rang out simultaneously from an angry group text, initiated by Kayla’s mom, Patricia, st ..read more

The original version of this post was shared first on Austin Moms, where I am a regular contributor, in March 2020. By then, my son was fully recovered from PANDAS - Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections (good ol’ strep throat). But it was a scary road getting there. My son is the clown of our family. He was born with the gift of a cheery, optimistic outlook and a funny sense of humor that’s wittier than most kids his age. He’s the youngest, eight and a half years younger than his brother, and because of his hilarious showmanship, he’s always ..read more

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview the smart and hilarious Toni Nagy, writer and comedian responsible for creating sketch comedy videos based on current events, which were - at the time of our interview - all very COVID-19-centric. Weren’t we so cute when we thought all we had to deal with was a global pandemic?? When our heads could stay firmly planted in the ground and remain blind to systemic racism?? Hahahahaha, adorable! The whole world has turned upside down since Toni and I wrapped up our interview, and while the Q’s & A’s in this post do touch on her passion for ..read more

This post first appeared at Discovery - you can find that post and learn more about this title by clicking here. Books based in the WWII era are like catnip for me, because I can’t believe there isn’t more time separating us from the treacherous events that occurred. Complex stories of unexpected relationships and the painful decisions people were forced to make seems like they couldn’t possibly have happened only 75 years ago. They should have happened centuries ago, before our world had become civilized. This beautifully written story of three main characters and how their lives are connect ..read more

A few weeks ago, my friend told me about a children’s book contest hosted by the Emory Global Health Institute. They were looking for submissions of books targeted toward kids ages six to nine years old, and the purpose was to explain the virus using science-based facts. You know I’m all about the mental health side of things, and I’ve found - from personal experience - that sometimes reading just the right book is just what I need to set me at ease. That’s why I chose to frame my submission with the intention of answering common questions and reference other times in history when we didn’t h ..read more

If I hear the phrases, “uncertain times,” “trying times,” or my most dreaded, “unchartared territory,” because FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY, it’s un-effing-CHARTED, I AM GOING TO SET MYSELF ON FIRE. Sorry for all the yelling, but sweet fancy Moses, can we come up with new terms? And is it too much to ask to GET RIGHT the ones we’re over-using?? Right before the world went on lockdown, I went into Austin to check out the city’s newest mural installations and to showcase them as a last minute spring break suggestion, in light of the fact that everyone’s travel plans fell apart just as the ki ..read more

When I was growing up, my parents would take me to the library and set me to work going through reels of microfiche films to help them work on our family genealogy project. They taught me how to look up census records, and birth and death records, but I became fascinated with all the stuff in the middle. I wanted to find out about what my ancestors did between those two events. The dates on their vital statistics records announced that they were born and then died.  Their stories showed us that they lived. For the last few years, I’ve been condu ..read more

As we enter our 49th week of quarantine, I thought I would--- Hm?. What’s that? We’re only on **checks notes** week one?  Is this a joke? Our new quarantine meal plan looks similar to this, so even though we’re only ten days in, I’m up 32 pounds and drunk, thanks to starting a drinking game based on hearing the words, “I’m bored.” Having kids complain about being bored is nothing new, certainly, where weekends without sports activities or planned playdates are filled with whining kids schlepping around the house and standing blindly in the pantr ..read more

We got our e-learning email from my son's teachers this morning and I am SO HAPPY to see that - in our school district, anyway - they’re making the focus about REVIEWING what the kids have learned this year, as opposed to learning new material. This is fantastic news for all of us, but especially for those parents who still have to work outside the home and worry about how to help their kids with schoolwork, and for those of us who are just overwhelmed in general by the responsibilities of teaching our kids. I wanted to share with you what we're doing in our home ..read more