Expert Mommy: Secrets Girls Keep

Carrie Silver-Stock is a licensed clinical social worker. Her new book, Secrets Girls Keep addresses the fact that too many teen girls are trapped by their secrets. So much so that girls hide their depression, eating disorders, pregnancies, and sexual relationships.

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LIVE Interview with bestselling author, speaker, thought-leader, Sarah Susanka

Yes, I said “home” not “house” because as I have come to find out myself, your outer spaces are very much a reflection of your inner spaces. What does that mean for us busy moms who are going a mile a minute? Whose inner lives and outer lives are often both noisy and chaotic? (Have you seen the inside of my car lately???)

We invite you to watch the INTERVIEW with bestselling author, Sarah Susanka below. Susanka tells us that bigger and more is not necessarily better… bigger houses, more stuff and more activities don’t equate to more happiness and fulfillment.

Have you experienced this? I know I have. Where are you in your life? Do you feel like your life is bulging at the seams? Are you feeling compelled to do some renovating?

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Expert Mom Interview: Love’s Garden

Long-time couple and Buddhist Dharma teachers Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe Ward offer The Three Keys and other concrete practices for the transformation of suffering and the establishment of happiness. Love’s Garden is an invitation to deepen our spiritual practice and strengthen our most important relationships.

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How to Find Your First Love

I recently fell in love with a book called Love’s Garden: A Guide to Mindful Relationships. The foreword was written by none other than Zen Master, Thich Naht Hanh, whom Zen Mommy and I have probably quoted from many times! The book was written by long-time couple and Buddhist Dharma teachers, Peggy Rowe Ward and Larry Ward.

I had the fortuitous opportunity to talk live and in person with Peggy… and that interview will be airing soon. One of the things I love about it is that the Wards share many concrete practices that nurture any relationship in your life… Read more

How to Change Your Life

That’s a tall order, huh? Okay… I might be overpromising.

I’m going to rewind oh, about five years. My then-husband and I were on the verge of a big move and I had narrowed our house search to a five-mile radius based on school district. I remember thinking to myself, “I want to change my life but I don’t want to change where I shop for groceries or get gas or drop off the dry cleaning.” When I wrote this in my journal later, I realized how silly it was. All those moments… grocery shopping, and getting gas and dropping off dry cleaning… add up all those moments… that IS life. Those were the activities that happened to fill mine at the time. If I wasn’t willing to change them, was I really willing to change my life? Read more

Zen Mommy Minute: How Do You Feel Love

How do you feel love?

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

Once we know a little bit about the five main love languages that exist, we can have a deeper understanding of not only how WE feel love… but how we can best love our spouce/partner and our children. Read more

How to Hug a Porcupine

Next month our oldest daughter turns nine years old and we officially enter the tween zone. So after ten glorious days of family vacation and 30 hours in the car, I just finished my fifth book on the matter. Each book offered many ways I can expect my darling daughter to transform and how I might (and might not) want to respond. After flipping, skimming, laughing, furrowing my brow and talking back to the books, I have to say through it all I had to remind myself to breathe…frequently.

My main take-aways after all that reading?

#1 to prepare for and support my child in seeking independence and a feeling of being “different” from my husband and I. (It’s a tweens job…knowing this, I can embrace it, not fight it)… and

#2, to practice ”active listening”. Read more

How Have You Violated the Good Mother Rules?

MONDAY, MAY 18, NOON EST… the ladies of Looking Glass Lane reconvened our online discussion following our talk with Ayelet Waldman’s about her memoir and latest book, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.

Listen to the RECORDING! Um… yes, the rumors of [a__ slapping] are true! Thank you, @MissIve!

But I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised considering the color of last week’s conversation! Evidence of “bad mothering” ran rampant, including Morgan’s swollen-belly-with-no-ring and Ayelet’s Dead Baby Club, and “acts of service” that keep marriages alive!!!

Ayelet says, “People bring everything of their own experience, of their own life into [what I write] and they end up responding to their own anxiety rather than to me.” So what are YOU bringing? You can still download the FREE chapter from her book here. You can watch our segment… click more! Read more

BADMOTHER: How to Stop “Should-ing” on Yourself!@#

Author Ayelet Waldman’s newest book, Bad Mother, inspired this video on “mother guilt” and the tendency we all have to “should” on ourselves. I hope you’ll watch, rate and comment. Let’s get this conversation G-O-I-N-G!!!

What conversation?! We’re having a book club discussion on THIS book. Practical Mommy has all the details HERE. Sign up here and the #badmother crew will send you Bad Mother’s Chapter One for FREE. Then join us… we’ll be TALKING May 11, 11am CST.

First Name:
Email:

(no spamming, renting or selling of names, per usual)
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How to Lay Off Other Moms

Today is THE DAY!

I’m reading Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, the new book by Ayelet Waldman that officially hits bookstores on Tuesday, May 5. Ayelet has been gifted with wit, audacity and dare I say it, some serious balls! This new book follows on the heels of her highly controversial essay, Mother Love.

I want to discuss this book with YOU. It is at the core of our experience as moms and women… yeah, that’s YOU! Download a FREE copy of Chapter One below and let’s talk!!!

Waldman minces no words that Bad Mother is a reaction to being raked over the coals in mommy blogs and mainstream media and essentially being condemned (along with others like Britney Spears) as a “bad mother” herself. Note that not unlike the Salem Witch Trials, judge and jury in Waldman’s case were other moms!

“They speculated publicly, down in the toxic mud of the comments sections on blog pages, that I was crazy, evil, a menace, that my children should be taken away from me. They cross-examined me on the set of Oprah. And New York City’s elite Bad Mother SWAT team, the warrior shrews of urbanbaby.com, sank their pointy little incisors into my metaphorical ankles.”

What inspired such vitriolic reactions from the Mom Police? Waldman’s confession in the New York Times that she loves her husband more than her kids. That’s all. Read more

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