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I knew it.  After my son was born I stopped working.  I felt lonely and depressed and put it down to being home all day with a needy baby, locked in the house (except for my morning run, which, thankfully, he didn't mind accompanying me on, in the jogger stroller -- not that he had any choice!). But over time, as he got more independent, learned to crawl, then walk, then amuse himself with Duplos and Legos, I was still depressed. It wasn't post-partum depression (well, maybe a little).  But it was because I had lost who I was. Before Phillip, and even after, my work was my life.  If I wasn't working, I didn't feel productive.  Or, worth anything.  Yes, the miracle of birth, yah, yah, yah, and I'd waited many heartbreaking years for this child.  But it just wasn't enough. Yesterday, in an op-ed in the Sunday Review, I finally saw why.  Writing for The New York Times, Stephanie Coontz revealed that studies have shown that women who stay at hom...

I could hardly believe it myself.  But a new story in The New York Times today says the number of people who hoard in this country is between 3 and 5%. Now, I'm not talking about people like my husband, who saves every newspaper because he's going to read it, he really is, one day soon. But there are people who hoard ashtrays and stuffed animals and clothing and shoes until it's piled all around them.  And maybe it's because I used to love the show, "Hoarders" on TLC, but this fascinated me to learn  that many people do indeed live amid chest-high piles of newspapers and dirty dishes and pet messes and just about anything else you could think of. I had to stop watching because, over time, it was just too depressing to see all these very sad individuals who, usually after some catastrophe -- a divorce, death of a child, a diagnosis of late-stage cancer --  found that buying and buying and buying things, stockpiling things, helped salve the hurt and loss. ...