Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb.

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline.... But also every single day a kid needs a break.

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles.

Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.