Hello, When my husband and I bought our first house, a charming Cape Cod, I thought it would be our forever home. It was where we began married life and where we brought our first two children home. I loved that house and poured so much care into it, assuming it would hold all of our firsts. What I did not expect was how challenging homeownership would be. We never imagined dealing with flying carpenter ants in the nursery, ice dams in the gutters, a basement prone to flooding, and neighbors...

Hello, I’ve been noticing something lately. I am no longer “in the know” when it comes to pop culture. My teenage children reference people, shows, and music that I have never heard of, even though they all definitely know what they're talking about. In the meantime, I'm watching reels on Instagram (which my kids tell me is like TikTok leftovers) to listen to translations of what kids are saying, so it makes sense to me. There was a time when I felt like a pop culture connoisseur (although...

Hello, The Gottman Institute, which studies relationships extensively, explains in their post," Managing Conflict: Solvable vs. Perpetual Problems ," that “sixty-nine percent of relationship conflict is about perpetual problems.” In other words, most conflict is not something you solve once and move on from. It is something you return to. Perennial problems are not the same as solvable problems, which are situational. They arise, you address them, and you move forward. They might require...