The other morning, I was digging around for something in the back of my closet when I found a framed photograph I’d stashed there in one of my fits of manic tidying.

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.

What happens when a normal, PTA-fearing mother of two teenagers suddenly finds herself thrust into a new career at the tender age of forty-one? And what if that career happens to involve an entirely new wardrobe, including high heels (which she hasn't worn in decades) and underwire bras (ditto)?

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.”

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.

The moments of our daily lives are the best therapist we could have if we pay attention. Motherhood provides an extraordinary opportunity because it triggers so many emotions that lay buried.

“I’m a grown woman who is not, I repeat, NOT going to be seen by the outside world as simply another mommy, a vanilla suburban parent, even when my kids aren’t with me in a minivan. I’m still cool! Damn it.”