Jody Allard

My favorite part about summer is the ability, for three short months, to stop looking at the clock or calendar and to start enjoying the present.

No one enters into marriage and becomes whole; there is no magical superpower that's granted alongside the marriage license. Marriage is simply two imperfect people who choose to come together in an imperfect union. That union can be remarkable and powerful, but it can also be dysfunctional and excruciating. Sometimes, it's even abusive.

Once upon a time, a band of heavily-armed men decided to take over an Oregon federal building. Because they were white, the Feds didn't shoot them in 12 seconds, and nobody even really did anything about it. (Possibly also because these intrepid defenders of our Constitution decided to seize a bird sanctuary.)

In today's news, the sky is blue, Republican lawmakers are assholes, and the House just voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Again.

There was another school shooting yesterday and 10 people are dead.

If you have kids, you have probably experienced the unique pain of stepping on a LEGO. After years of listening to parents' tales of woe, LEGO has finally devised a solution: adult-sized LEGO slippers to protect your precious feet.

The more I told him that something hurt me, the more that he did it.

A man who stabbed three people in a London subway station Saturday tried to instill fear of ISIS by yelling "This is for Syria" as he was hauled away by police. Instead, it is the words of a bystander that captured the world's attention.

Before I went to therapy, I married a lot of men, had a lot of children, and worked myself to the bone to achieve career success. If I wasn't happy, it was easy to blame that on my alcoholic, cheating husband or raising a tribe of kids or even working too damn much.

For all of the touchy-feely awesomeness of the idea of "focusing on compassion," there are moments in life when it's simply not practical. One of those moments is when it takes every last bit of internal fortitude simply to survive.