Carrie Saum

Instead of making lunch once a day, I make it once every three days. It saves on energy, brain power, and I don't have to figure out feeding myself in my janky kitchen more often than absolutely necessary.

This probably won't come as a surprise, but taking care of yourself is probably going to piss some people off.

Tamago kake gohan is made with hot sushi rice, an egg, soy sauce, and good dash of furikake (a traditional seaweed and sesame rice seasoning). It is comforting, filling, entirely satisfying, and stays with you for several hours. This is great fuel for a school day, a sick day, or a day spent hiking — or marathoning Project Runway.

So, can we be (mostly) done with pumpkin spice all-the-things now? Let’s move on to something better, bolder, more festive.

Awash in the postpartum anxiety, I felt glued to the couch, unable to mobilize myself to get anything done except the bare basics of being a present.

We are tired and hurting and don't know what else to do.

Nothing says fall to me like a pumpkin treat, and I love the combination of cloud-like cookies and frosting. It’s like an Oreo and a birthday cake had a baby during pumpkin spice season and created a true joy of autumnal desserts.

So, when your BFF moves into her first real home and her husband has a birthday at basically the same moment, you bake a cake. And not just any cake but a beautiful thing made of the best ingredients. You aim high, confident that you can come through for your BFF and celebrate her family's milestones with four spongy layers filled with thick raspberry preserves and succulent buttercream.

Gather anything orange, brown, olive green, harvest yellow, and dead. Dead leaves, dead flowers, dead hopes and dreams, and arrange them artistically on your front doorstep.

For the first time in my life, I was lost after leaving Evangelical Christianity. I watched the shores of everything safe and familiar wash away.