Everyone seems to want a neat takeaway before January arrives.

I don't have one.

What I have is a story about wanting to skip ahead and learning, slowly, to stay with what is visible right now.

My husband always says, “It’s not what goes right that you remember.”

That line has carried us through years of chaos, rerouted schedules, and stories too good not to write down. This one is about those sideways moments, and why they’re the ones that last.
open.substack.com/pub/1womanri...

I wrote this on my son’s 19th birthday a few weeks ago. Funny how the quieter, in-between birthdays can land with the most force. Nineteen isn’t a milestone, yet it opens his 20th year — his of being here, ours of learning to be his parents.
open.substack.com/pub/1womanri...

If you’re facing your first holiday sober, give yourself some grace. I got sober two weeks before Thanksgiving and started smoking again just to cope.

My top tip: Walk away from anything that disturbs your peace. Walk toward what protects it.
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This essay came out of a mid-week request from my daughter — nothing dramatic, just something a little outside our usual routine.

Paying attention to how we talked it through made me realize how much learning happens without enforcement or correction.

I stopped writing about parenting for eight years — not because nothing was happening, but because everything was.

That silence taught me that writing isn’t always about documenting life, it’s noticing what deserves a closer look.