It was really hard to read some of the sections where she's getting into the lives of various families. Made me feel like "WHY am I doing this?!" However, it is so well-written and there are so many cool psychology and wisdom nuggets along the way that I was glad to read the whole thing.
She writes about the Japanese phrase mono no aware - supposedly this is translated into something like "the bittersweetness inherent in ephemeral beauty." This is something I feel like I experience every day with Lucy. Mom likes to say "babies don't exist - they're an illusion!" It is such a fleeting and ephemeral time! When Lucy was born, mom said "You guys were never this small!" I had that same feeling when we saw a 5-week old at the chiropractor the other day...I already don't remember Lucy ever being that small, and she JUST was!
This is another book that brings up Flow (mihaly csikszentmihalyi) a whole lot...Flow seems to perk its head up in everything I read these days. She says parenting is NOT a flow activity - haha!
Here were some quotes I really enjoyed...
"I had children for the same reason I like growing grass and I like walking in the mountains. Having children is part of the way I'm wired, and it's easy to go with the flow. I had no expectations."
"To Aristotle, eudaimonia (roughly translated 'flourishing') meant doing something productive. Happiness could only be achieved through exploiting our strengths and our potential. To be happy, one must do, not just feel. Raising children requires a lot of doing. It's a life of clamorous, perpetual forward motion."
"That's what choosing parenthood does: gives strength and structural integrity to one's life through meaningful tension."
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