On daughters, inherited weight, and the moment someone decides the boulder stops here Four generations. One decision. (Image created with AI / Concept: @constelacionesfamiliares.sfco) Last week I wrote about carrying. This week I need to talk about putting something down. The Silence of It It starts with a reel on Instagram. Four women — great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, young daughter — standing together against a warm ochre background. The great-grandmother holds a bo

A belated Mother's Day reflection on sons, separation, and the love that stays The carrying begins before they can ask for it. (Photo: Getty Images, Unsplash) There is a particular kind of love that begins in the body. Not the idea of love, not the promise of it — the actual, physical, gravitational fact of it. Nine months beneath your heart. The weight of him in your arms. The particular way a newborn finds your shoulder and exhales, as if he has finally arrived somewhere sa

The Revivalists at The Anthem, Washington, D.C. — February 29, 2020. A stranger with a camera captured something I didn't yet know was my last concert with Chip. I'm the one with my arms in the air. I am a word girl. Always have been. When a song I know begins — anywhere, but especially live, with thousands of strangers around me — something takes over. I don't decide to sing. I just do. Every word, from the first note to the last chord of the encore. It's involuntary. It's j

What Co-Regulation Really Means — and Why It Never Stops Mattering Two chairs. An open horizon. The floor beneath you is yours to build. Photo: A Chosen Soul / Unsplash+ There are seven minutes I will not forget. It was a Sunday late-afternoon. My daughter Calli — thirty years old, a Parisian by choice and by heart — was minutes away from leaving our home for the airport, hours away from the flight that would carry her back across the ocean after two weeks home. She was packe