Our children are extensions of ourselves in ways our parents are not, nor our brothers and sisters, nor our spouses.

My hunch is that if we allow ourselves to give who we really are to the children in our care, we will in some way inspire cartwheels in their hearts.

We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are.

Honesty is often very hard. The truth is often painful. But the freedom it can bring is worth the trying.

If you like to make things out of wood, or sew, or dance, or style people's hair, or dream up stories and act them out, or play the trumpet, or jump rope, or whatever you really love to do, and you love that in front of your children, that's going to be a far more important gift than anything you could ever give them wrapped up in a box with ribbons.

Love isn't a state of perfect caring, it is an active noun like struggle.

I wonder if we might pledge ourselves to remember what life is really all about—not to be afraid that we're less flashy than the next, not to worry that our influence is not that of a tornado, but rather that of a grain of sand in an oyster! Do we have that kind of patience?