book

I am delighted to be included in an upcoming anthology of essays called Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood.

I’ve read a bunch of the essays, and they are smart, funny, wise, and touching.  The authors are a broad array of women who have in common that they are thoughtful, intelligent, and willing to be honest and human about what is a fundamental tension.  My dear friend Kathryn has an essay in the anthology; some of you know her hilarious and tear-jerking blog about life as an attorney and mother of two kids.  If you know her then you love her.  I do.  My other dear friend Katherine is included here, and people, she is the real deal.  The Modern Love real deal, if you know what I mean (I’m still waiting for her to kick me out of our writing group).  I’m pretty amazed, frankly, that I’m in a book with the likes of these two brilliant, beautiful Kaths.

I have written before about the struggle between family and work.  I’ve shared my deeply held belief that this is a privileged, fortunate struggle to face.  I do think, however, that the sometimes simplistically applied work and family categories can occlude what is, in my view, a deeper issue:

I sense something greater here, in the debate about work/life “balance,” a grander theme.  The topic is fraught and complicated, for sure; Lacy called it “volcanic” and I agree with her.  But the reason it’s so charged, I think, is because it probes at our innermost fears about how we are living our lives.  These fears are projected onto the scrim of professional/personal choices, but I suspect they run even deeper than that.  These fears are about the way we engage with the world and with those we love best, and about the way we spend our only true wealth: our time and our attention.

All of these themes and more are explored in Torn.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s better than Ishtar!  I promise!

Please consider pre-ordering Torn.