Key to accepting a difficult reality? Let go of judgments

Z is recording Bach. Fifteen minutes earlier he lost his music which is normal for him. When he was six years old his teacher could change a bowing pattern right before a performance and he’d remember just fine. Now, at 16, he can’t remember a bowing pattern even if he checks it right before he […]

How successful people deal with dead ends: sidestep and reframe

Every morning my Google Calendar alert says “you have no events scheduled today.” This used to be my favorite part of my email, but my prayers for permanent lockdown went unanswered, and my brother did shared screen to help me book a flight and he saw I have no calendar and he lost his shit.

How to find a new career

I’m carrying water from the spigot at Northeastern’s playing field across the street and through the park to the garden I planted, probably illegally. I used to think of myself as a community activist. Then I received an email from the state that they would run a lawnmower over my roses and I felt more […]

What a good career coaching session really looks like

People who are not my kids think it’s really interesting to listen to my side of a coaching phone call. In fact, lots of people say they’d pay to hear both sides, but it’s clear to me that if someone knows another person is listening to them the call gets useless fast and sounds more […]

What we learned from 9/11 about quitting work after life-altering events

A majority of people in the US are considering quitting their jobs right now according to the New York Times. This is obvious to me because in the months after the towers fell, my world was my recovery support groups — and in my groups, the conversations were all about who is going back to […]

The three types of independence everybody needs

I treat my freezer like a savings account. As a single parent with an unstable income, I know that when there’s an emergency I’ll use rent money, camp money, or even food money to solve the problem. But no matter what the emergency is, I can’t pay for it with frozen broccoli, so with food […]

Introducing my new puppy: Tali

I decided that as a responsible parent I should wait to get a new dog until my oldest son leaves for college. It’s his last summer at home. We don’t need more tumult. I waited until after college applications were done on January 15 and then I answered an ad on Craigslist for a puppy […]

We don’t talk about Israel in my family so I have to talk about it here

Everyone in my family holds a different view about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I used to track my site traffic like Google was my fortune teller. The top three countries for my audience were always US, UK, and Australia. The next few countries changed a lot, but often Israel was number four. My family is so […]

Divorce showdown Bezos vs Gates which is saddest

Marriage with kids is co-parenting and ironically, divorce with kids is co-parenting: same decisions, same values, same uneven emotional investment. Going through a divorce just to co-parent from different homes wastes so much time and energy that some people argue courts should not intervene in post-divorce parenting decisions, which would legally call a spade a […]

Gender fluidity and Autism open gates of power for women

  US scientists are scared to talk about differences between male and female brains, probably because it will get them fired. The loudest voices say there cannot be male and female brains because there are women and men who think in similar ways.

© 2023 Penelope Trunk