Before a friend in my sober community died of an overdose a couple weeks ago, I had never heard of kratom. What I’ve since learned is that kratom has sat on convenience store counters in pretty packages for several years. Recently, it’s grown in popularity after being marketed as a “natural” energy booster or pain reliever. It’s actually highly addictive. What’s even worse is that it now has a far more dangerous cousin, and addiction physicians are sounding the alarms about kratom and 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH.

My daughter had a boy over for dinner last week. I did what I assumed any reasonably socialized adult does when a stranger sits down at her table and eats her food. I asked him about himself.

One of my daughter’s friends announced on the drive to school that she hates words, because they can always mean something different. I don’t disagree. But maybe the trouble is that we aren’t using enough of them.

I recently watched the Bloomberg Originals documentary, Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media directed by Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz. The film cost $7 to rent, and it’s just under 90 minutes. It’s a haunting and alarmingly eye-opening must see for any parent, but it is not easy to watch.

Hayden Panettiere’s death came as a shock even though she confessed her struggles with substance abuse in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. New reports confirm an oxycontin pill laced with fentanyl was the cause of death. Some were likely saddened by the news, others many have scrolled by the headline, but the story landed differently for me than it did for most people.

As season 3 of “The Valley” comes to a close, Janet Caperna is talking publicly about a need to be right that has at times made her unlikeable. She’s a self-admitted control freak, a label to which I can very much relate. Whether it’s an admirable trait or not, I share the classic traits of impatience, urgency, and elevated levels of stress and anxiety associated with a Type A personality. 

10 months after 9/11, I packed a tape recorder, got in my car, and drove away from my entire life. I had no destination. Just questions I couldn't stop asking. I didn't know what I was running from. I just knew I had to go. New essay on the year everything fell apart. So when the school year ended, the road became my therapist.

When I was about 10 years old, I lied to my father. The incident is so fixed in my memory not because it was anything monumental. I lied about buying candy. The shame that I felt when I heard my father say, "but Kacy doesn't lie," has stayed with me for over four decades.

A personal reflection on an extraordinary woman

It’s a story that’s all too familiar to teenage girls and women. By the time most victims find out, the images are already everywhere. A text from a friend, a message from someone they don't know. Teenage girls are discovering that ordinary photos from their own social media have been fed into AI tools, turned into explicit images, and distributed. A federal lawsuit filed this week against Elon Musk's xAI is a long overdue opportunity for change.

A growing industry of monitoring apps is making a promise to show parents everything about the online behaviors of my children, from text messages to location history. But there is enough peer-reviewed research to suggest that the cure may be undermining the very safety I and other parents are trying to build. 

When I was a high school teacher, I used to take kids on trips organized through an educational tour company. In preparation for travel, the other chaperones and I would meet with parents and kids to go over the rules and expectations.

I stood in front of my classroom for nearly two decades. During the first several years of my teaching, I’d watch nervous freshmen file into my English classroom, armed with the same defense mechanisms I’d seen for years. They’d grab a seat in the back of the room, avoid eye contact, and slouch in their chairs–the posture that said don’t call on me. They were terrified to be vulnerable, and they just needed a little help finding some courage.