I can’t help but think that the twins were conceived with the ex and that the IVF is a cover.

All the stars for this comment!

Actually, this isn’t true in all situations. Very often it is, but with the rest the parents try to make changes but the kid is stubborn enough to take the pickiness all the way to nutritional deficiencies and failure to thrive (ie failure to gain weight and grow as expected). There are specialized. treatments needed…

I have to disagree with your use of “almost never”. They do work sometimes, although the ones that work are full of open and clear communication and often a future plan including an “end date” for the distance. Some people function better in LDRs. Also, I challenge what you mean by “work”. Most relationships end at…

There are specific styles of Chucks that are labelled as “women’s”. For instance, one of my pairs has a purple feather pattern and is labelled that way. Most of them are still Unisex though.

A report that I heard on my local radio station did identify them as psych meds.

This just made me belly laugh so hard that tears were produced and my husband was startled, and that is not necessarily easy to do via Internet. Thank you for that and all the stars for you! (Well, okay, share the stars with mocena)

I miss my pixie cut some days, but I do not miss all the BS you just referenced. Add to it the comments about “having a face for short hair”, the need to wear extra makeup and/or jewelry to assert your femininity while sporting short hair, blah blah blah. I know there are more but I’m blanking in my rage that is…

I just felt my insides twist up when I read your comment. So terrible, so clueless. I am so sorry.

From a psychologist- This is a well-written and informative piece, and one that I will be sharing. Thanks for your work.

This piece resonates with me. I had the pleasure of living 2 blocks from a Korean spa for 5 years, but I did not have the opportunity to take my mom. I believe she would have acted quite similarly to your mom, although probably with the addition of griping a bit about the forceful scrubbing. (Oh, but how clean you…

I’m 35 with a middle name Lee, but only because it was my paternal grandmother’s middle name. I have to say that having an Internet stranger identify the spelling of my middle name as normal makes me happy. Too many times I was told that it was the wrong/masculine spelling (which I grew to love as an adult), and I…

For us in the Midwest, redneck is both a reclaimed, proudly touted descriptor of self and a classist derogatory term. White trash is almost always derogatory and often classist, but not always. It is possible for wealthy individuals to be White Trash. Context is key, and while they are derogatory terms they are…

I’m White, but I learned early from my friends, their families, and general reading and listening that racism was an everyone thing, not a white thing. I didn’t grow up in the most diverse of places (ETA: large city in the Midwest, not diverse as compared to an LA or NYC) so I know that this knowledge has been…

Oh dear lord, you have that many people insisting that non-White folks can’t be racist? What the actual fuck is wrong with those people? ...Actually, I have a guess. I suspect they are people who haven’t actually spent time around non-White people.

Yeah, I’ve seen that too. Just as bad as “fustrated”.

I have the unfortunate suspicion that flustrated is used regularly enough that it will eventually become an acceptable word and maybe even get added to the language. (Irregardless is getting there and that word is unnecessary and doesn’t even make sense!) At least flustrated could have a meaning, as in the combo of…

No, they did NOT say that the vast majority of people who are seriously interested in adoption don’t wind up adopting because the kind of kid they want isn’t available. They actually used the terms “may be” and “in part”, and while the data may support that conclusion it isn’t a definite. It’s a hypothesis. Please…

I have to disagree with your absolute statement that NO 16yo would choose adoptive parents in their 40s. Making those kind of statements kills the point that I think you might be trying to make, which is that older people have an additional hurdle (age) in being chosen.

This is simply not true. There are people who get denied in the adoption process every day.