You and I did not grow up with unconditional love. It wasn't a thing, NAME! Children were loved when they were lovable, and shunned when they were difficult. These days, I cultivate relationships where I can be my authentic self. As a child, you don't get that choice.

People who need me to show up perennially happy and entertaining take too much energy.

I recalled the burden of 'earning your keep' while playing a family game this weekend. My brothers and I gathered with my parents for my mom's 80th birthday. It was our most harmonious family visit yet.

Everyone receives unwanted input at some stage of raising kids, but as a parent of a Spicy One, you get way more than your fair share. Comments like: "You’re just going to let him walk all over you?”, “She doesn't act like that for me!”, “You are getting played like a violin", “Don’t you ever say no?” and “He’s being a little brat!”.

The irony is that you are fully aware of the issues and are doing mental gymnastics to determine what to address and when. So much of your energy goes to leading this child intentionally. When your family doesn't respect your parenting or judges your child as bad or in need of more discipline, it’s defeating. Why can't they recognise the good that is happening?

The parents I meet on the Internet, often raise their Spicy One while suspicious of their own wounded intuition. They seek out people they perceive to be experts. Like me.

Many of the questions that parents, like you, pose seem like requests for factual data. But there is anxiety and concern wrapped up inside each question. A foundational assumption that what you are doing must be wrong.

Last week on the Internet, I had the misfortune to offend people...again.

Giddy from the full-body expectation that comes before teaching a Zoom parenting class, I strutted about the Internet, celebrating the cheetah print blouse I procured from a thrift shop for only $4 in Nashville. I called it my Lesbian Shirt.

Spicy Ones can be uber competitive. Playing Pickleball this week, I witnessed three little boys come onto the gated court, bickering loudly. I’m easily distracted so I missed a ball, worrying that they didn’t understand the court protocol. (You have to put your racket down next to the court you want to play on next. They weren’t doing that.) Probably fifth graders, they huddled around the scooters they brought in arguing loudly. It was difficult to quiet the maternal part of me that thinks I am in charge of every child in the world.

Minutes ago he was drunk with joy, riding the waves into the shore, his underwear filled with sand and wedged deeply in his butt cheeks. But something happened to upset. And then I watched his sister drop sand balls indifferently onto his back. Now he is in full meltdown. It’s got me wondering:

“How do we teach the Spicy One to get along with society without squashing their sparkle?”

Are you one of the moms who got sick over the holidays - exactly 4 minutes after you completed all the requirements of Christmas? Like your body was just waiting for the all-clear to let go and collapse? A friend fell prey to whatever bug is making the rounds. People told her to “enjoy the downtime” but instead she felt depression clawing at her. Downtime is not something all of us have the capacity to enjoy.

I'm not a resolutions girl but I go nuts for dreaming up my Word for the Year. A Word of the Year is just a sneaky way of naming one of your most important values and keeping it front and center so you can honor it.

There’s a moment in the film where the hot dad (AKA Matt Damon) and his spicy teenage son are arguing, yet again. Their mother/wife died last year and they've been holding up in separate grief corners of the house ever since. The teen has been acting out at school and making some self-destructive choices.

Standing with my fellow improv students on an LA stage last night, I felt a shiver of dread. My first Groundlings performance is next week. My kids and husband are the only ones that I’ve invited because this hobby is still in its infancy. An embryonic cringe fest. How did I get here? How did I find myself taking on the stress of performing with quick witted 20 somethings…in December?

Have you ever been Han Solo’d by your Spicy One®?

I’ll explain. It’s 1980. I’m nine and watching my most favorite scene in The Emperor Strikes Back, curled up on the old, red corduroy couch in my oak-paneled childhood basement. The princess and Hans have been through so much together, and now stormtroopers have him handcuffed and are dragging him off to be frozen alive.The up-til-now stoic Leia realizes she may never, ever see him again.

November is almost gone and the nation is licking its wounds (or celebrating depending on who you talk to). The toxic othering of the other is on full display across my feed. I need the snark and contempt to stop so I’m hiding by listening to my favorite chill Christmas song by Ben Abraham.

Shout out to Halloween for consistently delivering the expectation of anarchy. A chill in the air warns of the potential for mayhem. Perfect conditions for the Spicy One.

Growing up in Catholic school, I was warned by superstitious friends that Halloween - and the day after: All Souls Day - were times of crossover from the realm of the dead. Beware if you stay out past midnight. The boundary between the living and the dead can blur.

Halloween is the one time Normies, and Freaks like me, can engage in cosplay without judgment. I relished twisting my ashen face into a scowl and locking eyes with little people who quickly scurried away. I was frightening. I loved the power it gave me.

Does your Spicy One like to scare people? What do you think makes it so pleasurable for them? I have my theories. The most obvious is that it meets our sensory seeking and dopamine needs. Fireworks go off in my brain when I impact someone enough to create an involuntary response (be that laughter or a scream) from their body. Scaring someone gives me the same high as creating or destroying something. Like I’m capable of magic.

Mostly I, the mother, had to create environments and daily rhythms that helped me be Okay with the front seat I occupied on my vibrant child full frontal exuberance.

At an outdoor concert this summer, Tyler Childers played my daughter’s favorite song All Your’n. She squealed with excitement, her left arm carelessly draped over my shoulder. I knew I was supposed to return the embrace, but how exactly? If only I could Google it. I matched her body posture and swung my right arm across her back and right shoulder. We swayed and sang. I looked straight ahead, breath held as my 19-year-old shouted the words into the night. I loved it. It was awkward. I wanted it to stop and to please never end. Walking back to the car, she complained, “you didn't look at me the entire song.” Dang! I didn't know that was also part of the correct touch recipe. (Click here for help to not take your teen’s frustration personally).

Humans need connection and a sense of belonging – to know on a deep level that nothing we can do could ever remove our parents' love for us.

And as your Spicy One shines with the intensity of a thousand suns, you’ve probably started to notice some inherent contradictions in their nature.

I want to assure you that this sort of duplicity -- while maddening at times, to be sure, is also quite normal.

You could say it’s par for the course.

And after spending a week with my parents at their Park City vacation home, I was reminded of all the old stories.

My mom's evidence of what she calls a “willingness for mayhem” shines a light — not on one particularly difficult child, but on a mother and daughter struggling to find their way.

One of her favorite tales to tell took place when I was four. We were stationed in Landstuhl, Germany, and took weekend excursions often. This time we were headed to a small town in France.

As the story goes, I was very much looking forward to being in France, what I assumed must be the home of my favorite food, French fries.

We were about to leave for our annual family road trip to Park City, Utah from L.A.

With the Spicy One flown to college and her Mild Child sibling cranking out college applications, it suddenly occurred to me that this would likely be our Last Family Road Trip.

As we piled into the car, I said it out loud.

Everyone immediately denied it, but the pit in my stomach and the tear in my hubby’s eye confirmed it.

This would be the grand finale of our family car trips.