Essays

“How to Help Your Kids Be More Independent.” ParentData with Emily Oster. September 29, 2025.

“Thoughts from a ‘Bottle Blonde’ on Survivorship, Age, and Beauty.” So Many Thoughts substack with Elizabeth Holmes. September 16, 2025.

“A Motherhood Realization I Had While Ice Skating.” Cup of Jo. January 27, 2025.

“What Taylor Swift Can Teach My Daughter About Love.” The Atlantic. January 3, 2025.

“On Cancer and Grieving the Loss of My ‘Fancy Self’.” So Many Thoughts substack with Elizabeth Holmes. July 16, 2024.

“I Miss My Hair.” The Atlantic. January 20, 2024.

“I Have Cancer. I Can’t Put My Kids First Anymore.” The Atlantic. July 17, 2023.

“Talking about Death with Small Children.” ParentData substack with Emily Oster. June 13, 2022.

“I’ve Been in School Mental Health for 10 Years. My Heart Is Breaking Right Now.” Truthout.org. June 9, 2022.

“Black Love Adrift in a Sea of Whiteness: On Asali Solomon’s The Days of Afrekete.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. Spring 2022.

“Two Ambulances: Caregiving, loss, and a mother’s legacy.” The Virginia Quarterly Review. Spring 2022. (PDF here)

“I’m tired of judging other people’s Covid choices.” New York Times. March 31, 2022.

“Talking to your kids about grief is painful. And you have to do it.” New York Times. November 19, 2021.

“Resist fear-based parenting.” New York Times. June 26, 2020.

“The Lice: Vulnerability, contagion, and children.” Pandemic Files, The Yale Review. March 30, 2020. Also published in A World Out of Reach: Dispatches from Life Under Lockdown (edited by Meghan O’Rourke), Yale University Press, 2020.

“Ghosts in My Nursery: Mourning the brother I never knew.” The Yale Review. Winter 2019. (Notable Essay of 2019, The Best American Essays 2020)