I have learned this important lesson: no one really knows what he or she is doing. The difference between the people who go for it and the people who don't? The people who go for it just ignore the fact that they don't know what they're doing.
I'm tired of hearing about 'Damages,' I don't care how life-changing 'The Wire' is, and I don't want to hear another word about 'Battlestar Galactica' or its super-awesome ending.
Some divorcees turn their pain inward. They brood, and they grieve for a long time, always wondering if they could have done something differently to keep this from happening. They make every problem in their relationship into something they could have prevented.
Burlesque dancing didn't solve all my post-divorce problems, but what it did do was force me to court myself for a little while.
If a show is a critical success but a ratings flop, I assume that people are just championing the show because it looks cool to root for an underdog.
I am somewhat grateful to the disintegration of my marriage for teaching me a lot about myself and about relationships, and though I wish it hadn't been such a taxing lesson, I wouldn't change a thing.
A lot of new stepparents fall into the trap of letting children disobey household expectations in order to gain favor with them.
The period that directly follows the dissolution of a long term relationship is extremely volatile, with emotions running the gamut from misery to elation to relief to terror.
Your wedding day is supposed to be your big day, and yet a lot of engaged couples find that instead of creating an event that will be important to them, they're dodging through a minefield of modern etiquette traps.
When we each focus on being the dominant force in our own universe rather than invading other universes, we all win.
Dealing with wedding stuff is a bit of a double-edged sword - it seems that divorcees are expected to either burn it all on the front lawn, tears silently coursing down their faces, or keep the stuff, shrine-like, concealed somewhere in their homes.
Keeping physical items from the past is important - we keep old toys, grandparents' jewelry, yearbooks, dance recital programs - and we assign meaning to them. Those items become the memories, and that's a very healthy thing to do. The problems occur when we have too many of those sentimental items, and they start weighing us down.
Stays at the in-laws' aren't inherently sexy.
Unequivocally, individual human beings who live together will always have different standards of what a 'clean house' looks like.
Post-divorce, the world can feel harsh and full of jagged edges.
In Hollywood, it seems that the people least successful at being married are the ones most eager to tie the knot over and over again.
Things can be tough even when surrounded by nice Pottery Barn stuff.
I grew up in a very small town in North Carolina, weird and pudgy, without too many other kids to play with. I spent a lot of time watching TV. It was my reassurance that the outside world was bigger and more colorful than the one I lived in.
I'd watch shows like 'The Kids in the Hall' or 'Twin Peaks,' and I'd see weird people being celebrated and appreciated without compromising their weirdness. On 'The Facts of Life,' I'd see girls who were pudgy, beautiful, popular, tomboyish - many ways of being female - and I'd feel quietly reassured.
I haven't always been the best advocate for my own body. I was a too-tall, pudgy child who felt completely out of control of the genetic lottery ticket she'd been given, so in retaliation, I shut down. I ignored my body and hated it for not being tiny and cute like my friends' bodies.
