Five of my six kids have never met my parents. Despite the fact that family was a huge priority for my mom – she verbalized that value often and committed regular time to family gatherings – she and I haven’t spoken for over ten years. Family estrangement is hard and multi-dimensioned, and my experience has caused me to spend a lot of time reflecting on what went wrong. I desperately don’t want to duplicate the cycle with my own children. The thing is, my parents were good parents in a lot of ways. They were good providers, deliberate with their money, because they wanted to give us kids a better…

Mama animals always make me feel so self-reflective. A few weeks ago I sat by a pond outside a neighborhood restaurant, watching a pair of goose parents being followed by their fluffy goslings. The babies were like little mimics, doing everything their parents did. They swam in a neat little row, mama in front, papa in back (I imagine this is to keep them all in line; if Jamin and I were geese that’s definitely how we’d do things). The babies waddled around pecking at the grass surrounding the pond looking like tinier, fuzier versions of their parents.  Tonight I came back to the same restaurant, same pond, and saw…