“We are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time,” Laura Ingalls Wilder once said.
Remembering Tomie de Paola
by resolutewoman on April 2, 2020 in book, children, families, Uncategorized
My son Jay, who just got married, is 30, but I will always remember the day a long time ago when we met Tomie de Paola at a Dallas bookstore. Jay was impressed because he liked de Paola’s book The Art Lesson, which tells how the author received a box of 64 crayons for his […]
Summer reading
by resolutewoman on May 24, 2018 in book, children
Once a week during this school year, I have visited a junior high student at a school only a few blocks from my house. She will be in the eighth grade next year, and I have been her mentor since she was in the fourth grade. I want to be sure that she has plenty […]
Your children will be fine
by resolutewoman on May 12, 2018 in change, children, holidays, mothers
Long ago, when my children were young, I read a reassuring article. Your children are going to be fine, the author stressed. However, she added, you will never be the same. And, I know for sure that my children have helped me become a better person. “It is not until you become a mother that […]
Important work
by resolutewoman on May 10, 2018 in children, holidays, mothers
If you are a mother, never forget that you have done—or you are doing—important work. “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much,” Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis once said.
The Three Ts
by resolutewoman on September 26, 2017 in children, families, friends
Dana Suskind lists the three Ts for interacting with a child in her book Thirty Million Words—tune in, talk more and take turns. I think her three Ts apply to successful interaction with children and adults. Here is Suskind’s brief explanation. “In order for the necessary serve-and-return of conversational interaction to be successful, there has […]
A selfless heroine
by resolutewoman on April 6, 2017 in book, children, resolute-women
Elizabeth, the student I visit every week at my local elementary school, and I recently spent our time together reading about the new “Beauty and the Beast” movie because Elizabeth went to see the movie and really liked it. We read in the Disney Beauty and the Beast Official Collector’s Edition book that Belle was […]
Wonderful and most wonderful
by resolutewoman on August 25, 2016 in children, friends
I’ve known Stephanie, who is the same age as my daughter, since she was in elementary school. Now she’s a teacher and the mother of a beautiful baby—Millie Rose. On Sunday, I watched as the baby, dressed in a long white dress, was baptized. She raised her head and looked around, alert and interested, as […]
What it’s like to be a mother
by resolutewoman on February 25, 2016 in children, mothers
“D.C.” was one of many women incarcerated at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center in Tulsa, but this particular prisoner took a poetry class and wrote a poem that’s published in a slim book called Poetic Justice. She writes that being a mother is: “like sunshine sometimes. It’s a wonderful melody.” And, then, it […]
Don’t vote for Hillary
by resolutewoman on December 22, 2015 in children, holidays, resolute-women
My husband Jerry and I invited our neighbor Lauren, who is in the fourth grade, to go on a holiday carriage ride with us. We heard the clop, clop of the big horses and saw splendid Christmas light displays, and we thoroughly enjoyed Lauren’s company. She told us the name of her best friend and […]
What’s this site about?
We wrote our book and we’re writing our blog because we were frustrated. We were frustrated with experts who try to tell people how to lose weight, raise their children and improve their marriages—and be a success—in 10 easy steps. In three weeks. In one book.
Our self-help book and blog are for grownups—for women who know that there are no easy answers to life’s complex problems—that finding solutions requires some self-knowledge and self-searching and hard work.
We want to help women discover their own answers and live with them as their guide. We want to help you and other women Help Yourself!
We write about making changes and also about many other issues important to women, including families, friends, work and food.