It's sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child's nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.

For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.

When people ask what I write about, that's what I tell them: 'The drama of human relationships.' I'm not even close to running out of material.

Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.

The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.

I have no doubt that over the years my children will find plenty of things about me to criticize. But something tells me that twenty years from now not one of them will sit on some therapist's couch complaining because their mother didn't spend enough time vacuuming up glitter.

Every child, woman, and man should possess license to speak or sing in his or her true voice.