Is there something the matter with me? As a wife? Because here’s the thing: I don’t always like to do my “wifely duty.”

Lately, I’ve had a growing concern for moms. Not in the how-can-we-manage-our-over scheduled-kids kind of way. But I’ve been deeply worried about us as women.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for all the lessons my parents taught me. I am grateful because those lessons are now all I have. I don’t get any new advice.

My brother Sean and I were sitting at our round kitchen table eating lunch one sticky summer afternoon in the middle of my childhood, when my father opened the freezer to survey its contents and figure out what he’d make for supper that night. This freezer was always unreasonably disorganized and packed to the gills...It was like an unexploded mine, waiting to combust and assault you with frozen shrapnel the moment you opened its door.

When I was pregnant with my youngest son, Owen, I signed up for a yoga class, but quickly dropped out. I love yoga, but something about the nausea and lightheadedness I felt pretty much every time I tried to bend my enormous body in half took the joy out of it for me. So I looked forward to the class with moms and new babies under two months old with great anticipation. What could be better than spending an hour and a half in blissful yogic union with six other mothers and their babies?

Two types of safety education work well for parents and children and can easily be added to their family’s safety plans: pre-planned discussions and spontaneous opportunities to teach.