Eliana Osborn

You know how someone can give you a compliment that you know isn’t true? Like, they tell you a dress looks good when you are absolutely certain that is not the case? But if they keep saying it looks good, you start to think “Yeah... this looks good.”

How do you love someone who continually does things to hurt himself? I’ve been holding a phone with my stoned, sobbing brother on the other end for nearly 20 years. I keep picking up the pieces, keep having my heart break, because he’s my brother.

In this film, we got to walk backstage with the young Broadway actress currently playing Annie. She explained the rules for taking on the role: Once a girl started her period, she couldn’t be Annie.

I cried every single day of my life until I was 18 years old. I did not know this was abnormal.

1. Borrow a child.

Look, Connect Four is not a good game. But it can be over quickly, which is pretty great.

After years in apartments that should have been condemned, even these sad restroom facilities were vast improvements. And so we stayed, the husband and I, vaguely embarrassed when guests stayed over and commented on the bordello vibe of the bathroom.

Then we had a kid. No working bathtub suddenly seemed like a big deal. And the functional bathroom spaces weren’t places you’d want to hang out. There’s a lot of bathroom time once you’ve got tiny humans. (You’ve been warned.)

If he were an a--hole to my kids, things would be easier. But he’s not. He’s good with them. He’s his best self. It makes me alternately happy and heartbroken.

I get how we want to make our kids successful and everything, right from the start. Feeding into the pressure, here’s the tagline from Starling’s company: “The world’s first word-tracking system that can improve your child’s trajectory for life.”

Being a person of faith isn’t cool. It is very personal to me and not something I like to talk about a lot, which goes counter to the whole idea of ‘sharing the good news of the gospel.’