Families

When thinking about how we’ve reached a place where anti-woman sentiment is on the rise in our politics, public life, and culture, I suggest we begin with our children.

Before you had kids you were all, "I am going to be SUCH a good parent. I am never going to do what my parents did. Never. TV destroys the developing brain. There will be none of that nonsense."

My six-year-old son fired his therapist. “Michael just told Carla she’s not coming back next week,” my iPhone displayed. I’d just arrived to an appointment with my own counselor, ready to talk about how I’d just survived one of the most difficult weeks in the entire history of my being, and was overtaken with thoughts of my autistic child breaking this news to someone 30 years his senior.

It took five years for my daughter to be diagnosed with autism. There were dozens of red flags, beginning from the time she was about 10 months old, but her pediatrician always told me that she was fine. "She made eye contact with me," she reassured me. "She can't be on the spectrum." Besides, most children with autism, she reminded me, are boys.

A: No one is perfect, B: Perceived perfection is a LIE, and C: THEY’RE CHILDREN FOR FUCK SAKE!

“The online community has been one of my most valuable resources,” Quinones-Fontanez emphasized. “It's made our journey a little less lonely, knowing that I have people in my life who understand. I have built a community that can provide me with advice and hope.”

In times of stress, we often keep everything bottled up inside until it explodes out over the slightest disagreement. But this approach won't work if you want your marriage to survive and thrive.

"Divorce is never easy. Ever. But it doesn’t automatically mean ill-adjusted kids. Children are adaptable and seeing a well navigated divorce can actually impress on them that the hardest things in life can be handled with grace and maturity."