News & Updates
How to Stop Freaking Out : The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Cool When Life Gets Chaotic publishes on September 10, 2024 and I’m so freaking (haha!) excited to share it with all of you!
For more details about my first book for kids, head over to the book page or scroll down for a list of podcasts.
What My Daughter’s Siddur Ceremony Taught Me About Jewish Prayer
My daughter’s siddur ceremony was a few weeks ago. She’s in first grade at a Jewish Day School, and after spending the year studying tefillah, or prayer, the entire class got their own prayer books. In our school, as in many other day schools, the parents’ job is to...
The One Word That Perfectly Describes My Complicated Identity
I spent the first three decades of my life looking for the answer to this sentence: “I am ________________.” Yes, I know. I am a woman. But I have never played the stereotypical “female” very well; I was a tomboy as a child, and even now, I don’t cook, I’m not...
What Setting My Passover Seder Table Made Me Realize For The First Time
My husband and I hosted the second night seder this year. Even though I don’t cook and can’t read the Hebrew in the Haggadah well enough to lead, I do know this: Seders should be fun and engaging for the kiddos, and we each need to see ourselves as though we were...
The Lie I Told Myself About Good Jewish Mothers
I started the Jewish Mother Project last fall with the declaration that, “My goal is not to become a perfect Jewish mother, but the ‘Best Carla’ I can be for my daughters.” And then I confidently marched off in the opposite direction, following a path that had very...
How a social worker ended up talking to her young daughters about puberty
“Mommy, let’s play a game. You pretend to be the Mommy, and I’ll be Puberty Girl.” Puberty Girl visits our home frequently these days. She’s 13 years old, and she wears a bra, smears deodorant under her arms and drags a razor across her legs. She gets her period, and...
Three Breathing Exercises to Lessen Stress and Improve Sleep
Breathing is getting a lot of attention lately, and I know it's beginning to sound trite. But there's a reason we mindfulness folk keep beating this particular drum: It works. Here's why. First, just merely remembering to breathe requires us to interrupt whatever we...
5 ways I keep the peace in my house
I don’t do well with tantrums. I know there isn’t a parent alive who enjoys it when their child ends up face-down on the grocery store floor because they can’t have CocoCrunch, but my daughters’ meltdowns leave me feeling angry and depleted as I desperately scour the...
5 Reasons You’re Having a Hard Time Being Mindful
Every time I talk about mindfulness, I hear a few common responses: “My brain is way too busy to be mindful.” “My ADD is so bad; I just can’t focus.” “The last thing I need is something else on my to-do list. I already feel guilty for everything I don’t get done.” I...
