This is a picture of indomitable me: Look at the Cartier watch. I bought it with the stock sale from my first startup. It felt like money was falling from the sky, so ten grand for a watch was nothing. We walked through Central Park every day to get to the top nursery school for autistic kids in NYC. I got him the best speech therapist, the best occupational therapist, and I was networking to find out what was next. Read more

Online business from hell: child trafficking in video games.

Artist: Li Songsong

This is how trafficking happens online. Often the system is so efficient that it never has to change to in-person.

Trigger warning.
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In my courses about personality type, INFJs ask the most questions. ENTJs ask the fewest questions.

The only type less fun than an INTJ is an ISTJ. So if an INTJ wants to look fun they need to marry an ISTJ.

ENFJs were the nicest about me being late to every webinar and they were the type most likely to book a one-on-one coaching session after the course. Read more

I’ve been hiding so much that the only way I could sort it out was with a list; a list of things I thought were too awful to write. Read more

I stopped talking with my mom a few years ago. She might not have noticed at first. My brothers have all cut her off at times as well. But my mom is pragmatic. She knows she and my dad were terrible parents. She apologizes and by all accounts, she is a much more enjoyable person to be around when she is not raising kids. Read more

I knew something was wrong the day my son lay in bed in an emergency room waiting for his MRI to come back. A nurse entered his room and said, “Has your son been outside the country recently?”

I did a double-take. “It’s pretty late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

“Ma’am, yes or no?”

“No.” Read more

My son left. He’s in Boston now. My friend Lauren agreed to take care of him.

“Until when?” I said.

“Right now, just get him on the plane. He doesn’t have a cello and he doesn’t have a teacher and he just needs someone to help him. I can help him.”

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When you tell your friends, in disbelief, about this post, you will say, “She’s liveblogging her nervous breakdown.”

I am doing that. Because I don’t know what else to do. Read more

I am writing this on my new dining room table, in my new apartment in Swarthmore, PA. We live above Dunkin’ Donuts, and I told the kids absolutely no buying a donut ever. But I bought a few coffees there as a goodwill gesture for using their Internet which thank goodness filters up to our apartment.

The kids think it’s totally incompetent that we’ve been here four days and still do not have our own Internet connection. They do not recognize we also don’t have pots and pans and sheets and shampoo. Read more

manzanitakids.com

If feminism is about having the right to make choices, then it’s also about the obligation to make a choice. You cannot choose to have a spouse who’s a breadwinner and who shares everything 50/50. You cannot choose to have everything in life but only do it half the time. Having something—anything—is about commitment. And you cannot choose to have everything up to your standards but also allow other peoples’ standards to prevail. Read more