Most of us were taught somewhere along the way that pushing through hard feelings is the responsible thing to do. Get up. Do the thing. It doesn't matter how you feel. It sounds practical. It costs more than most people realize. Prefer to read? The full article is below. Like many people, I thought that getting through hard feelings meant setting them aside. I told myself countless times as a young single mother, “Jennifer, it doesn’t matter how you feel, get up.” The problem with that...

Most of us have been there. Something happens — maybe it's your fault, maybe it isn't — and your first instinct is to point at whatever or whoever caused it. That's human. That's normal. But how long you stay in that place, and what you do to get out of it, is entirely up to you. That's what this piece is about. Several little experiences over the last couple of weeks that just keep reminding me of how easily we can get lost in blame and why it’s important not to. It’s sneaky the way it can...

This piece started with someone else's words and ended up somewhere very personal. Ryan Vet wrote a beautiful article about motherhood and the erosion of community that stopped me in my tracks. I had too many thoughts for a comment. So I wrote this instead. Below is my full response — and if you'd rather watch me talk through it unscripted, the video is waiting for you at the bottom. Isolation hits differently when you're raising a child with special needs. As a mother of a child with special...