Before I found a therapist I liked and could trust, I didn't know much about mental health aside from what I'd learned in AP Psychology in high school (which was taught from an outdated nineteen-eighties textbook that had pictures that currently brings to mind murder documentaries. It essentially demonized anyone with an atypical brain or life experience and loved using language like "chemical imbalance" which is no longer a thing professionals use. I also learned a lot about mental health from movies that usually did a terrible job accurately portraying what it's like to struggle with things like anxiety or depression. I knew next to nothing about self-care, trauma, or the symptoms of things that I actually lived with every day.

And then suddenly something snapped in his baby brain and he turned and charged a pod of tots like a bowling ball headed for the pins...toddlers were airborne and flying.

I wrote an Instagram post about my writing process because I've been doing some new and scary things (writing fiction for the first time alongside my second memoir), not because I'm an expert because holy shit I’m not (just look at all of the mistakes in this post, by the end you’ll be like holy…

Continue reading ➞ How To Write A Book (Or Tackle Any Daunting Goal) When You Have Absolutely No Free Time

Hello, hi, ciao, salam! Holy shit, folks, it's December and in my insane multicultural family we have about a thousand traditions. And this year, now that we have a toddler, I'm trying to nail down which ones we keep and which ones we don't and find a balance between "chill and relaxing with hot cocoa"…

Continue reading ➞ How to Tackle the Holidays in a Mixed-Culture Family