David Minerva Clover

I don’t want to deprive my child of these magical Halloween memories, I just also want to light candles and talk about our ancestors.

Breastfeeding brought me back. It kept me in my body, forced me to hold my son’s body, and helped me stay connected to the physical reality of everything. What I remember are flashes of joy in the darkness, his tiny hands clenched in determined fists. His feet curled against my soft stomach. The release of the milk starting to flow. My arms wrapped up around him.

[W]hen tickets went on sale for a DIY punk music festival that my wife had attended several times before we were married, and she lamented that there was “just no way” that she’d be able to go, a light bulb went off in my head. “What if we just all went together?” I said.

For those of you just tuning in, my wifespouse wanted to go to this weirdo punk festival in the middle of nowhere, and I, a chronic pessimist, decided it would be a good idea to go as a family. That means me, her, our 1-year-old child, and one incredibly intense weekend.

None of us follows any one parenting philosophy to a T; we’re all making split-second decisions about what is and isn’t dangerous.

It was like how you might feel if you thought you were the only person who liked apples. Maybe everyone else just thought apples were for decoration, but you liked to eat them. And then one day you found someone else who also ate apples, and you got really excited about that! And then suddenly, it hit you… What if everybody secretly ate and enjoyed apples, only we were all too afraid to mention it?

A human being does not go through an experience like that without getting to know themselves really, really, well. I learned more about myself than I could have ever imagined. Today, I am going to share some of those lessons with you.

In today’s world, children may be a financial liability, but that shouldn’t make them a luxury item.

Getting rid of all of your stuff is all well and good if you are childfree, but if you have the fortune (or misfortune) to have children, they literally will not let you.

I learned binge-watching Mister Rogers that he wasn’t just being comforting, he was rephrasing many of the things I was hearing in therapy.