My body is none of your business Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t have a weight problem. But it certainly seems like other people have a problem with my weight. To be clear, I’m fat. I have big hips, big breasts, big thighs, and…well you get the idea. Voluptuous…

What does the new year have in store for us? — It was March 2020, a few weeks into home quarantine. Everyone was rushing out to buy toilet paper, but what I really needed was a birdhouse. A bluebird house. Zoom-school had started, as had the daily fights with my fifth grader. No, she couldn’t skip her classes, and hell no…

8 Strategies for Self-Care and Emotional Well-being My husband’s employer just announced mandatory telework for three more months, through the end of June. They’re following the science, they say, and the science tells them it won’t be safe to gather until at least then. Three. More. Months. I know I’m…

What I’ve learned from a long line of ‘non-compliant’ mothers about battling life’s headwinds — I don’t picture my mom as she was dying, her bottle blond hair gone short and gray, trailing around an oxygen tank like an extra appendage. I see the face of a 40-year-old woman, wearing blue scrubs, smiling at my teenage self over dinner in the McCullough-Hyde Hospital cafeteria while…

The quest for a shared humanity in this violent world — My father had a pat response whenever I asked if he believed in God. “God and I have an understanding,” he said. “I leave Him alone and He leaves me alone.” It was an unsatisfying answer for a kid wrestling with big questions. His break-up with God meant our Iranian-American…

What does America stand for? — I was in junior high school in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ran his presidential campaign around the theme of America’s place as “a shining city on a hill.” I may have a more tarnished view of American exceptionalism now that I’m middle aged, but at the time it struck a…

Can this Iranian-American still feel at home in the country where she grew up? — I was born in Iran but raised in a small Ohio town, tucked in the southwest corner between Indiana and Kentucky. It’s where I went to kindergarten, learned to ride a bike, got my first job at Wendy’s, graduated from high school, and made lifelong friends. Despite my middle America…