Blog
The Root and the Shoot
Something happens to a writer who leaves the utopia of freelance writing and exchanges it for a year in the Chicago Loop. My apartment was two blocks from Temple Shalom, the epicenter of the Jewish neighborhood of Chicago. I felt our Jewish roots every day when I...
A skewed view of stay-at-home motherhood
There I was, bleary-eyed after another night of round-the-clock feedings and struggling to balance the morning's newspaper on my lap as I nursed two squirming infants, when I read the latest rap on stay-at-home mothers. It came courtesy of a new U.S. Census Bureau...
Book Review: Who Does He Say You Are?
When you open up Colleen C. Mitchell’s book, Who Does He Say You Are?, expect to be surprised, challenged and changed.
Top Ten Table Manners
Good table manners aren’t just about making your mother happy. Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, how we eat is an outward sign of our inner personality and character. By teaching table manners early and often, they’ll become second nature. Has your family...
Eight Strategies for a Calm, Fruitful Advent
Most of us are distracted with so many things. Busyness is a stress-inducing condition of daily life. We rush from one place to another, and try to juggle one too many commitments. With only one month left before Christmas, our lives are going to be even more rushed....
Book Review: Advent with Saint Teresa of Calcutta
The newly-canonized Saint Teresa of Calcutta is especially compelling, I think, because many of us remember when she was still alive, serving the most vulnerable and needy. Saint Teresa did more than serve, though–she inspired through her words and her example.
The Gift of Faith: A gift for my daughters
Advent marks a new beginning for the Church. A new calendar year. A new season of awaiting the birth of our Saviour. With all of the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations, there is the inevitable attention to gifts and what will Santa bring this year. My...
Priest in a Tijuana Cab – The Unspeakable
The unspeakable from the back seat of a Tijuana cab. Its too late to walk home. I grab a cab. From the back seat I see 3 holy cards tucked into the frame of the ceiling light. It's dark so I can't be sure but one looks like Don Bosco and one like Mary Help of...
Book Review: Catholic Coloring Books for Prayer, Reflection and Relaxation
Have you ever sat down to color with your children on a rainy day and discovered that you stayed at the table, filling pages with crayon-bright colors, long after the kids had wandered away? Coloring is just so relaxing. It seems like everyone has figured this out:...
Women and Careers: The World According to Fulton J. Sheen
I’m in the throes of moving for the second time in less than one year. While packing our bookshelf up once again, I came across “Love, Marriage and Children” by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. I don’t know about you, but it usually takes me several enjoyable hours to pack up...
Don’t Miss Grace Filled November
When fall arrives I often think about how important it is to reflect on significance of November. At the beginning of November we celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day and Remembrance Day follows soon thereafter. These three days remind Catholics to be united in...
A Mother’s Role in Her Children’s Relationship With God
This past Sunday, my family celebrated my baby girl’s baptism. So, you can imagine all my worries on the Friday and Saturday before the big day. How much food should we order? Will everyone fit in our cozy little home? What cake flavour will the guests enjoy the most?...
Halloween can be a Catholic teaching moment
I was taken aback in early October when I went to a local drug store to pick up some medication and was confronted with rows and rows of Halloween merchandise. Even with trick-or-treating just around the corner, the costumes, candies and other accessories...
New Traditions are Hard to Start
By the time my husband John and I were married four years we had two children. One thing we struggled with over the years was merging our different backgrounds to create our own family traditions. For instance, how to celebrate a birthday. I have my own ideas about...
Celebrating an Important Birthday
Did you know that Catholics celebrate Mother Mary's birthday? It's a feast day in the Catholic Church that can be made into a whole lot of fun for kids. Formally it's called the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. A few years ago, I went all out and got an ice cream cake...
Book Review: The Catholic Mom’s Prayer Companion
The Catholic Mom’s Prayer Companion edited by Lisa M. Hendey and Sarah A. Reinhard Ave Maria Press (August 2016) The Catholic Mom’s Prayer Companion, a new daily devotional from the CatholicMom line of books at Ave Maria Press, boasts over 80 authors for the 366...
7 Tips for a New School Year
Fall is coming. School has already started for some and is still to begin for others. Often times fall can be a major source of stress, especially for moms. New activities starting, homework, car pools, religious education, and on and on. So what’s a busy family...
A Powerful Woman’s Testimony – World Youth Day
Here's Natalia's testimony, she shared it during the World Youth Day Vigil in Krakow, Poland - 2016 "On Sunday, 15 April 2012, I woke up in my house in Łódź, the third largest city in Poland. At the time, I was the chief editor of a fashion magazine, I had been away...
Don’t Worry, Be Happy … Sing the “Ave Maria”
He is a gentle, happy man. A ten-time Grammy Award winner, a virtuoso vocalist and conductor, Bobby McFerrin is best known for his 1988 hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Bobby McFerrin’s peaceful, joy-filled improvisations well up in a heart that is attuned to...
Frugal Fitness the YouTube Way
So many people assume you need an expensive gym membership, a personal trainer, and $200 Nike’s to be succesful at fitness. And of course those do work for some people, but they aren’t necessary at all. If the financial aspect of fitness is preventing you from getting...
HELP! My Husband is Addicted to Porn! 10 Ways to Cope
While selling books after a women’s retreat 15 years ago, a woman with graying hair deliberately stayed at the very back of the line. Everyone was gone by the time she reached me. Holding out a book for me to sign, the woman smiled nervously. We made small talk, then,...
The Last Photo
Two weeks ago, I went into our closet to pull out the pieces of my husband’s police uniform in order to make sure that everything was ironed and ready and that all of the components were there so that he could work his paid duty that evening. If you aren’t...
8 Bad Reasons to Leave the Catholic Church, and 1 Good Reason to Stay
In May 2015, Mark Judge published a column over at RealClearReligion titled “Why I Left the Catholic Church.” Judge, a columnist at The Daily Caller and the author of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, explained why he made the decision to...
Why We Need Our Friends
“I really don’t like my husband much these days,” the young wife complained to another married woman. “Don’t worry, it’s a ten-year marriage thing. It’s not your relationship, it’s the stage your relationship is in,” the older married woman counseled. In these days of...