There are days when someone feels down and they just don’t know why. The black tights fresh out of the drawer have a tiny hole that will fester and grow as the day wears on. A kid at school is being a jerk. You just don’t get what you want, no matter how hard you ask. My mother once said… Read more →
Category: family value

Fly, Fly Away
It was almost immediate. The kids and I stepped inside the garage studio that is Detroit Flyhouse circus school, and the bickering, nasty attitudes and defensiveness of the day melted away. Completely gone. As if they had never been there in the first place. Except they had. This is the first summer since I’ve been a mother that I have… Read more →

The Hunger Games
I didn’t want to read it. The premise seemed so horrible to me that I couldn’t imagine how I’d get through the book. But my daughter insisted. She loved the trilogy so much that she wanted to read each book aloud to me, and how could I refuse? So this summer, every time we got in the car, Eliana would… Read more →
Laughing with My Sister
It was the most ridiculous outing I’ve ever taken. And yet, it really was fun. We went tubing yesterday down the Platte River with my sister and brother’s families, 16 of us in inflated tubes, intended to float down a winding stretch of shallow river almost to Lake Michigan. The tour would take two hours, after we walked along gravel… Read more →
Preparing to Fly
The therapist recommended that my children need to just feel joy. Pure, unadulterated joy. Have fun. Find ways to let go. So I organized a four-session private at Detroit Flyhouse, a circus school where we can take to the silks and the trapeze and let it all go. Heart-opening daring. We have lesson 2 this morning. Everyone is up earlier… Read more →

Saying a Belated Goodbye
We moved into our Southfield house all full of hope and reverence. Eliana was growing in my belly, Asher was an eager toddler. We had hope for our marriage, for our growing family, for what the future held. When we left that house 10 years later, we had a third beautiful child, but our marriage had crumbled and he… Read more →

Sibling Love: Another Divorce Truth
When the Tsimhoni children were sent to juvenile detention for refusing to lunch with their father, the judge specified that they should be separated. Isolated away from one another. They’re already banished from their home and their parents. Now, they lose the only consistent support they have, one another. The other day, my eldest son commented about a troubling behavior of my… Read more →