When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

Religion is increasingly a woman's domain in America.

One question hovers over all of us who choose to spend our lives writing: why keep doing this in a world where so many forces are aligned against us?

The way to tell a really big story, I think, is to tell a really small story.

Learning to heal ruptures is a key to having a successful relationship. Adam and Eve model that for all of us. In Hollywood love is a choice, and you live happily ever after. In real life love is a series of choices. You make the choice to be with a person over and over again.

The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family's positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

Everybody has heard that family dinner is great for kids. But unfortunately, it doesn't work in many of our lives.