Gemma Hartley

I want to live my best life and, honestly, it's exhausting. Sometimes I wish I could just take a break and say I'm content with where I'm at.

Starting a new year makes me look toward the future, looking at all the choices that lay ahead of me. But it also nudges me to examine my past in a very certain way. It's the time of year I always find myself thinking about the choices I didn’t make — about the life I didn't live.

There is a time to be prudent and fair to “many sides” of an issue, but dealing with Nazis is not that time.

The insecurities about my age pushed me over the edge, making me work myself to the bone trying to be what I thought society would deem as a “good mom.” So I wish people understood that it’s never OK to comment on a mother’s age — young or old. Because the judgmental connotation is always there, no matter how innocent the intent.

This straggler struggle is weighing on me! That is, the struggle of having one straggler child left at home, and I’m wondering if it will ever get better.

I went on to drink a small glass of wine or two per week throughout my pregnancy once I got over the initial shock of it being unplanned. Once I had adjusted to the fact that I was going to bring another baby into the world, I was still overwhelmed by the stress it brought on. I had suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of my son and we had decided not to have any more children. I didn't want the risks or the horrible anxiety that came with pregnancy. Yet here I was, facing all that uncertainty again. Damn right I needed a drink.

It wasn’t the name I would have picked — not originally, at least — but as days turned into weeks, it grew on me.

There is a chasm separating "bad behavior" from "being bad." Our kids have to learn from us that their one-time actions do not permanently define them.

I know it won't be long until he can read the headlines before I can bury the truth. He will learn to read, and then to suffer. Words will haunt him.

If you were to walk into my house on any given day, you wouldn’t know that I am an efficient and organized person.