My friend Abby says “Dress for the day you want to have, not the day that’s trying to have you.” Her words echo what my mom used to tell us when we were children. We were home-schooled, but she never let us stay in pajamas for school. We had to get dressed, and not sweatpants…

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I was a wreck in August and much of September, and I couldn’t understand why. I remember a conversation in which friends were comparing notes on mental health and medications and they described themselves with official-sounding labels. All I know is the med I’m taking. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I cried in…

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I’ve been hosting life:unmasked for a year now. It isn’t the most wildly popular link-up ever, but I think that’s understandable. Not everyone is ready to take off their mask. It takes courage and a certain amount of confidence that being real isn’t going to wreck you. In some ways, it hasn’t changed my writing.…

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“It looks like everyone else is keeping their house beautifully AND creating magazine-quality posts AND cooking gourmet healthy food AND raising perfect kids who eat the gourmet healthy food and follow their customized personalized monogrammed chore charts.” I hear this from friends a lot. This is exactly why I started Life:Unmasked last year. Because all of…

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I’m [relatively] safe and sound at home, 8,000 miles from Sri Lanka, today. The time change has been rough, compounded by the 33 hours of travel to get home. My body keeps telling me to stop pulling all-nighters. It begins to shut down mid-afternoon in protest of the total routine inversion I’ve inflicted on it…

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