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*Names of friends mentioned have been changed. Picture this, at five-something this morning, my phone rang. It was my stepdaughter. Except it wasn’t. There was a man on the other end of the line, somewhere in Guatemala, holding Maya’s phone. There are certain sentences you expect to hear at five in the morning. Good morning, perhaps. Could you stop snoring. Maybe even something’s leaking. A strange man in Guatemala telling you he has your daughter’s phone is not one of them.

I am talking about downsizing now that most of the kids are gone. Which raises a question I didn't expect: what are you actually keeping when you build a home, and what happens to it when the reason for it moves out?

After my stepson Marc's graduation earlier this year, a group of us parents were having drinks and talking about what our kids were doing next. One by one, people went round the table. University. Further studies. The next qualification. The next logical step. A few eyebrows went up when we said Marc was taking a gap year. "A gap year?" We explained: instead of going straight into further education, he was taking a year to explore. To work. To travel. To try things. To figure

When nobody is pulling at your sleeve. Nobody really tells you that one of the rewards of raising children successfully is eventually becoming less necessary to them. Not unloved. Not unwanted. Not unimportant. Just less necessary. And I am discovering that there is something both beautiful and unsettling about that. This year, I married off a son. Another son, already living with his girlfriend, has moved with her into their second home together, bigger this time, another sm

Some days the hardest part is not being yourself, it is explaining yourself. Identity fatigue is the exhaustion that builds when your identity is treated as something to be justified rather than lived.

Let's journey through #gratitude today. 🙏 Take a moment to reflect on your blessings. There's always something to be thankful for,...