When I did my first media interviews after I was announced as a team principal, the first question was, what qualifies you for the job? The second question was, did your husband place you in the role? And the third was, how are you going to do your job as a mother? I was speechless to think that we were not making any progress.
The speed limit on most of Maui's highways is forty miles per hour, but my mother never went above thirty.
My family was very loving but also very superstitious. My mother was always telling us, 'Don't walk under a ladder or you'll have bad luck,' or, 'If you spill salt, be sure and toss a pinch over your shoulder, or you're in trouble.'
My mother wasn't controlling at all. She was a stabilizing force who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. Now it's the big circle game. Taking care of her is a great blessing for me. I'll tuck her into bed, kiss her on the cheek, wipe up the mess on her blouse from whatever she spilled.
I guess if there is a big spiritual experience in my life, it is me becoming a mother.
Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice that doesn't involve other people and doesn't involve some sort of consistent tradition.
Seven years after my mother's passing, I still reach for the phone for a split second to call her. We spoke every day.
I joined forces with the American Cancer Society in 2010 as a spokesperson for the N.F.L.'s 'A Crucial Catch' campaign, which benefits the American Cancer Society. This was important to me because I lost my mother to breast cancer, and I have always felt a strong commitment to doing all I can to fight this disease.
On the sets, I used to scare people. I team up with my level of people and sometimes do spooky things. I've inherited this from my mother, as she used to scare my neighbours by dressing up like a ghost.
If salt ocean is the Great Mother from whom all life has sprung, fresh water is the Nurse entrusted to nourish life within her wanderings and around her wave-lapped margins.
When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady - and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out.
I can remember when I was just, like, about four years old in Compton, and my mother would have me stack 45s, stack about ten of them, and when one would finish, the next record would drop. It was like I was DJ'ing for the house, picking out certain songs and so this song would go after that song.
I grew up with a mother who always had every fashion magazine stacked up on the side of her bed. When I was really young, I'd lie in bed with her, and we'd look at the magazines.
My parents scrimped and saved all their lives, to the point where my mother used a disgusting old oven mitt that was stained and partly patched together with a skirt I made in seventh grade.
I've loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother's a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.
I don't know why men are so fascinated with television and I think it has something to do with - if I may judge from my own father, who used to sit and stare at the TV while my mother was speaking to him - I think that's a man's way of tuning out.
My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.
When my mother, sisters and I arrived on the shores of America when I was 8 years old, the boat on which we came, a freighter, passed the Statue of Liberty.
My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist. They named me after the great saint as a symbol of communal harmony.
As a working mother, the last thing you need is to be hard on yourself. As a stay-at-home mother, the last thing you need is to be hard on yourself. As a twenty something with no job prospects or life partner in sight, the last thing you need is to be hard on yourself.
