Gift-giving and receiving don’t have to be a stressful process; read on for some tips to keep in mind when accepting gifts gratefully.

If you are anything like me, your “mom brain” is always going 1,000 miles per hour. The holidays, especially Christmas, bring that number to about 172,468 miles per hour.

Over the past year, I have been grieving the loss of a broken friendship. I have been through this before, as I am sure many of you have also, but my kids, especially my daughter, were watching me in the aftermath.

February 14th.  To some, it brings flowers.  To others, candy and a beautiful card.  To me, it brings 23 rambunctious, sugar-filled darlings that I’m trying to still teach math to! That’s why I opt for candy-free valentines. 

Life is hard. Parenting is hard. Kindness matters. There have been so many moments since becoming a mom where other people’s words and actions really impacted me.

In reality, we are just seeing the highlights.  We imagine what life must be like for people who appear to have it “all together,” and we fill in the blanks with unrealistic, heightened versions of reality.

Taking a long weekend girls’ trip has become our annual tradition. This year, there were 10 of us—mothers, daughters, cousins, friends. Everywhere we went, people asked where we were from. (Austin’s a super friendly city, y’all!)

I will always consider her my best friend because she is the best friend I’ve ever had. There’s no replacing anything we had – and that was just one more lesson I had to learn and another part of grieving the loss of the friendship. 

If you are reading this, and you are the new mom in town, keep trying…. keep showing up and smiling. Keep chatting about the weather and how kids lose their gloves like 416 times a winter.

Empty nest syndrome is a period of sadness or depression that sets in after your last baby bird flies the coop. I’ve seen evidence of this on Facebook for years – and with good reason.