How surrendering to postpartum weight challenges healed, not hurt, my relationship with my body Few things humble a woman more than some of the special gifts Mother Nature reserves for our fair sex. I am more than grateful for fertility and our ability to bring life into the world, but these wondrous powers come with unique costs. There’s menstruation and its accompanying pain and mood swings. Then with the gifts of pregnancy come the challenges of morning sickness, back pain, and daily cogniti

I’ve been thinking a lot about new life this springtime. After a long winter, this week in Cleveland, we saw our first daffodils and hyacinths. They’re always the first to show up, and they may not last more than a couple weeks, but the sight of them represents something larger—the promise of spring and warmer days to come. And a reprieve from the long wait for winter’s end. After more than four years, my husband and I are having a baby, expected this fall. When this baby’s born, our last baby

It’s a phrase Sheryl Sandberg heard often after her husband, Dave Goldberg, unexpectedly died at age 48 in 2015. In her recent book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, cowritten with psychology professor Adam Grant, Sandberg paints a brutally honest picture of what grief looks like. “I can’t imagine, either,” she’d often reply. “But I have no choice.” Sandberg’s words reminded me of one of my own brushes with grief. “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe was one of the s

Our culture seems to be on a never-ending search for happiness. Surveys show women reporting happiness levels at an all-time low, and advertisements continue to vie for filling the happy gap if we just buy this product, try this lifestyle, make this change. It also shows in the books we’re buying. Comfortably sitting on the bestseller list right now is a book by Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. The Little Book of Hygge offers insights into the “Danish secrets