I never thought of myself as having a problem with anger. Sure, there was the odd bump in the road, but mostly I went about my early adult life enjoying smooth relationships with friends, family, colleagues.

I had waited until my mid-thirties to become a mother, and like everyone, had very high expectations for myself. I would be the Über-Mother: able to negotiate any and all difficult child-rearing situations with ease and grace, building the most loving of mother-child relationships.

… Or at the very least, I would make none of the mistakes that I felt my mother had made with me. Mom was angry a lot. She didn’t seem to have much fun raising two embattled girls, mostly on her own. My sister and I still joke about Mom’s “Angry Face” – the bulging eyes, the gnashing teeth, the death-grip on the back of your neck. That, I vowed, would never be me.

Then I had my first child.

He was a beautiful little bundle of intensity, with emotions that completely trumped his size. At first it was amusing to see his little face all scrunched up in anger and to encounter his acts of pint-sized defiance. Then it was exhausting. (I often laid awake at night worrying about what I had in store for me when he reached adolescence, given that his will at the age of two already completely outstripped mine.) By the dawn of his toddlerhood, all of my notions about über-motherhood had flown out the window and I was hanging on by my fingernails, just hoping that we would both survive the next 16 years without a visit from the Department of Social Services. read more

The dryer’s buzzer is blaring for the third time, the phone keeps ringing, and Junior just tossed the remote into the toilet. When life starts spinning out of control, try giving yourself (rather than Junior a quick time out).

When you feel your stress level rising, take a moment to do this quick breathing exercise. Oxygen is the one friendly element that constantly surrounds you. Here’s how to take advantage of this widely-available stress reducer:

(1) Do a cleansing breath by inhaling deeply, holding for three seconds, and then exhaling.

An Open Letter to My Breasts:

I owe you an apology. Since puberty, when you joined me in my struggle to obtain a positive body image, you have faithfully stuck to my chest in perky B-cup fashion. Yet I disdained you for being too far apart and not big enough. Pregnancy changed all that and taught me once again that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

You were the first one to tell me that I was pregnant, when my husband noticed that you were suddenly… well, bigger. I had been so tired all that week, and I had quit partying and eating McDonald’s, but I wasn’t losing any weight. So I put two and two together and voila — a positive line on the pee test.

Once the hormones of pregnancy hit, you swelled to bodacious proportions, and I was so proud. I wore sexy camisoles, and I looked at you in the mirror and loved you. I did not allow my husband to touch you, however, because you were sensitive and itchy. So itchy. I really tried not to abuse you by scratching you, because it scared the guy in the next cubicle. Also because I knew you would come in handy when I delivered my baby. You would provide him with food, for free! And fueling you would leave me obligated to consume mass quantities of calories without guilt, a luxury I eagerly anticipated. I didn’t realize that the real abuse was ahead of us. read more