I was thrilled to host Nate and four dynamic women to gather around my dining room table to chat. We waited excitedly for Nate to arrive, and as he came in the door we welcomed him into the group around the table. He is just as adorable and caring in person as he appears on TV.

Nate was really interested in what was going on in all our lives–and as Moms, each of us faced a variety of life situations, but even though we had just met, we were able to connect on that universal level of motherhood. It was amazing to me to see how really, truly, we have similar challenges of caring for our family, and ourselves in the process. And Nate made a connection with the group right away. It doesn’t hurt that he has the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen–I just had to mention that because his electric gaze drew me in to the conversation. As you can imagine, having a gorgeous guy show up and really want to hear what is on your mind, listening to what you have to say and wanting to know more, was close to every Mojo Mom’s fantasy! He talked to us for more than an hour and stayed to say hello to everyone who wanted to meet him. The whole Nate Berkus Show team was great to work with. I have to share one funny detail–the producer reassured me “Just come as you are, you don’t need to clean up your house special for us,” but I thought that no woman in America was going to have Nate come over without picking up first–unless he was there to do a makeover! But it really was my house…just looking its best to welcome this top interior designer.

Nate is a genuine connector and I can’t wait to see what he does with his new show this fall, with both talk and design. Today on Oprah they are re-airing Nate’s farewell episode from her show last May, so I’ll be tuning in to watch that to tide me over until September 13th.

I don’t know those details yet about how the video we shot might make it onto the new show, so keep an eye open for me and please let me know if you see our segment pop up!

Update: News of Nate’s visit made it onto CNBC.com and Forbes.com!

I am doing my best to turn that around once school starts, I hope*, but in the meantime here is a collection of the latest articles that I have appeared in as a featured expert. Many are timely for back-to-school!

How to Let Go As They Grow: An Age-By-Age Guide, by Susannah Felts, on the Better Homes and Gardens website, BHG.com

Like Riding a Bicycle: You had all sorts of hobbies and interests before you had kids. Why can’t they also be part of your life as a parent? by Amy Levin-Epstein, in Parent & Child Magazine and on Scholastic.com

Give Helicopter Parents a Break, by Adriana Barton, in Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. I am really proud to be part of this article because I think Adriana Barton did a very thoughtful job with the research and social commentary.

*There have been some major mojo-altering events happening in my family life this summer, so I’ll be building my fall schedule one day at a time. At the same time I have some cool new ideas to work on as life permits. More details to come on what’s going on, but that is a separate blog post.

1. I am letting go of all the noise that doesn’t matter. This includes realizing that only about 10% of my email is either personal, important, or requires action. I should get off a lot of lists when I get home. I also need to pare my interests and involvements down as well, stop spreading myself so thinly, and recommit to the creative, professional, and activist priorities that meant the most to me. It feels like I need to prune back a lot in order to send out some new branches (which I’ll tell you more about in the coming months, when the plans are fully sprouted!). A lot of what I have to give up on is interesting and meaningful, but the question is what do I really need to stay focused on to reach my key goals for the next year?

By the way, when I check in with the news, I realize how trivial and/or depressing most of it is. I could live my whole life without reading another word about the Kardashians. And even on straight-up news sites, the wire news is mostly about death and violence, a lot of which really does not need to be brought to my constant attention. Random tragedy makes news, but what is the mental cost of taking that in all the time?

2. I am spending more time with my family, nature, sun, wind and water, and lots of exercise. After publishing a book earlier this year, which required untold hours at my desk, I really needed to get my butt in gear again on a basic physical level.

3. My mind is free to roam and is really connecting with what I want to do next. What a concept for a Mom–what do I want to do? We should all spend more time really connecting with that concept, whether it is what I would want to do with three hours of free time, what do I want to eat for dinner, or what do I want to write my next book about?

On the professional front, new plans are cropping up at an amazing speed without the distraction of the usual “noise” of the constant news cycle. This is very exciting to me, after feeling as burned out as I did this spring, following my latest book publication and unexpected, ongoing family crisis. It was important for me to realize that a few days of vacation did not instantly, completely recharge my batteries, but I am getting there. I needed to create time and space for my mind to settle down, roam, and unconsciously consider many ideas. So in the past two weeks, I read for fun. I sat and did nothing. I swam in a lake. It has been glorious.

I am still on my mostly-offline break. Not being strict about it feels helpful, too–it’s not forbidden, it’s just not necessary. In the meantime, I am hoping to capture and organize all these good ideas while they are fresh in my head. I plan to be back to a more regular blogging schedule next week, so I will see you then!

So what’s next? The part of the summer I have been waiting for: I am going to give myself the gift of three weeks off to recharge my batteries. Some time will be spent writing or thinking about writing, much time with family, and my overall focus will be on getting a lot of exercise during the day so that I can sleep at night, and letting my mind run free for a while. I can feel the seeds of “what’s next” growing inside me but I need to give them the time to sprout in the dark soil, exploring the potential paths for sending shoots up into the light.

I have managed to just about run myself into the ground by rushing from one project to the next for the past two years now. First I pushed to get the second edition of Mojo Mom done, only slowing down slightly for an emergency appendectomy that cropped up in the middle of editing. Then last summer I jumped into Courageous Parents, Confident Kids full-steam ahead, wanting to see if we could get a new book out in a year (we did!). I thought I had given myself enough of a break last year, but now I can see that I did not. Coming to a full stop might have been more uncomfortable than I had imagined. I felt restless, with much urgency to plow forward once again. An addiction to adrenaline and busyness? Probably!

So I want to try something different this year, and we’ll see how I feel after three weeks off. If I want to write and blog, I will, but I just can’t predict how that muse will arise. So if I am not here for a while, or if I just put up really short blog posts, don’t worry, I will be back.

As I was thinking about all this, my Courageous Parents, Confident Kids contributor Maya Frost’s latest newsletter popped into my inbox. Her piece Why I Stopped Blogging About Education really speaks to me–having the courage to move onto the next phase of your life, even if your expertise is in full bloom in a different area. What I like most about what Maya says is that she is moving on because she has written the book on Bold School Global Education, and that resource is still out there for anyone to use. Perhaps what is holding others back from trying her ideas it is not more information from Maya, but their own fear of trying something new.

I am not trying to make too much of a literal connection between what Maya is saying and Mojo Mom, but it reminds me that as my life and career evolve, I need to have the courage to stretch my comfort zone to pursue interests that take me in new directions. I think that as women, we can be prepared to expect lifelong reinvention, again and again, if we are lucky!

I have wonderful seeds sprouting in my secret garden of the mind, so stay tuned….

My Dad got sick rather unexpectedly on June 4, left his home in an ambulance, and will not go back to that house. The good news is that he made it through his health crisis and is doing much better. But it’s been a long road for all of us since then. While he was recuperating, I had to downsize his house for him–finally making decisions about many items that had been swept up in previous moves–pack, and move to a new apartment. We have made a lot of progress. Only now can I see the fresh new page turned in our lives well enough to write about it.

I don’t want to go into a long lecture about family caregiving but I will say that what I wrote about in the newest edition of Mojo Mom, and the points I make in my Top 10 Courage Boosters article have come true for me. For example: If your parents or in-laws become ill or financially vulnerable, you may end up with the responsibility of becoming their primary caregiver unless other advance arrangements are made. (Mojo Mom, p. 191) It is a real challenge to play catch-up when the whole system breaks down unexpectedly.

My parents have been divorced from each other for over 25 years, and I am the only child, so when a caregiving crisis hit, it fell pretty hard on me. Dad remarried but has been single for the past three years. But it’s strange how the echoes of a quarter century ago come back in what I think of as “Divorce, the Sequel.” Luckily, I have had incredible family support, including my Mom who is the unsung hero, walking my dog and driving my daughter around as needed, so that I could be available for Dad. My husband has been truly empathetic as well, rolling up his sleeves at home and also lending a sympathetic ear as I talk about how I have had to jettison my own work for a month, feel like I am neglecting him and our daughter, and feel frustrated that after all the work I have done, I still have a huge pile of undone tasks sitting in front of me. He has told me “you are doing a great job,” which I heartily appreciate, but I suspect part of what is hard about all this is that it is nearly impossible to do a “great job” in this situation.

The reality of it all can be harsh. A sore throat turned into ten days of bronchitis when I had to go clean out a dusty house on a deadline rather than rest in bed sick. I’ve driven over 2000 miles since June 4, often driving 120 miles a day in a loop that encompasses day camp, Dad’s old house, and back. I am a “work at home” Mom who has rarely been at home or working (on my own projects) for a month. I feel like a “stay at home daughter,” something that puts caregiving into a new light. I have been arguing for years against writers like Linda Hirshman and Leslie Bennetts who write harsh books aimed at mothers such as Get to Work…and Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late. Those books still make my blood boil because I believe they undervalue caregiving, but from my new perspective I can see that we need to craft a new caregiving system that allows people (ahem, daughters in particular) to maintain their jobs even when a family member needs more care. I don’t want to launch into a policy discussion today, but I will plant a bookmark for later. For one thing, I have learned is that a trend that hits my parents, born in the early 1940′s, hits the Baby Boomers in earnest a few years later. And we know the Boomers have not saved enough money to make this all better by waving a magic wand containing the resources needed to build a support system in their elder years.

For now, I am extremely grateful that my Dad is doing well. I am trying to focus on his strengths and how lucky we are that we are getting through this. I am equally grateful for the help my wonderful Aunt, Mom and husband have contributed.

All along I’ve been bemoaning my status as an only child during a family crisis, saying “I need at least three sisters to help me dig out of this.” And while I can’t conjure up sisters, I have found that professional organizers are angels who will show up to pull you out of a quagmire in your hour of need. It took over 80 woman•hours to downsize, pack and move Dad’s house. I could not have done that on my own–not only would it have taken much longer, it would have been an impossible task, as the three organizers I worked with made it go more quickly and smoothly, and eased the emotional burden and stress on me. For example, they went through every single scrap of paper in the house, organized them and filed them, showing me only the items they had questions about. Paperwork is my own personal weakness, so that task alone would have left me huddled in a corner crying after one day, but Deb Zechini stuck it out patiently for over three days!

So huge thanks go out to Marsha Stayer, Stefanie Watkins, and Debbie Zechini who were there for me. Talk about showing up, rolling up their sleeves, and jumping in–they did it. Marsha had a great knack for saying “We’re almost there” and “This is the fun part,” just when I felt like I was completely out of gas.

If you ever need help, invest in this vital service! It is well worth it! Marsha, Stefanie and Debbie were my “sisters in arms” working together as a team just when I needed help the most. I guess that’s how we get through any crisis. Whether it’s friends, family or experts, you need to find those people who will lock arms with you, dive in, and stick it out until you figure out where you need to go next, and how to get there.

As for the rest of my month, July? Still a bit of chaos, but I am trying not to lose faith or collapse from exhaustion just as things are looking up. I have one professional event that I am looking forward to, and then I will take off a couple of weeks at the end of the month for the long-awaited recharge I have promised myself and my family.

It is strange how life deals you just as much as you can handle: way back on Friday March 26th, I hit “publish” on Courageous Parents, Confident Kids. That night I got together with my Dad at a family event, and realized he wasn’t his usual self, which started the ball rolling on the health concerns that led up to June 4th. So I have not had a real mental rest in a long time. People have been telling me “be sure to take care of yourself,” yet for a while that has not seemed feasible. But as I wrote in my Top 10 Courage Boosters:

When it comes to self care, remember that as a parent, you are a first responder to many urgent situations. You need to keep your batteries charged because you could face a new challenge at any time. And, taking care of yourself will make you a better parent. And, most of all, you deserve it! (I have found that many Moms need at least 3 reasons to make self care a priority!)

Message to self, received, loud and clear.

Right now I am trying to remember to be THANKFUL for all that is going well, and to be honest, I feel overwhelmed by what’s not going well, and all the work ahead of me. I am spending the next two weeks downsizing my father’s house in preparation for his next move. This involves catching up on tasks and decisions that should have been taken care of three to forty years ago. So it’s daunting, and it’s on my plate. But at least we still have a chance to catch up now and help my Dad move forward in a better place.

I have to go into family mode but I have already found that even though I have less time to work right now, it is important to keep my writing and professional career going in any way I can. On the one hand I have to be realistic about the fact that until we get Dad moved and settled in, I will have little time and energy for anything else. But on the other hand I have realized that totally squelching the creative part of my life would just make things a lot more depressing. So let’s just say I am in the hive right now, so even if you don’t see me or hear from me as much this summer, I am working behind the scenes to recharge, redirect and relaunch my mojo as soon as I can. You should see the results by the time school starts, and I’ll keep writing as much as I can this summer.

Know that when I write about these issues, it is not an academic exercise, it’s my life, too.

The idea of “helicopter parenting” came originally from college admissions officers who saw that parents were “hovering” and micromanaging their young adult offsprings’ lives to an intense degree–butting their noses into what used to be interactions between the college and the students without the parents’ involvement. Deans are getting calls from parents about their students’ grades, and parents are even worming their way into the job interview process, to the dismay of prospective employers. Now the anecdotal label of “helicopter parents” is being studied by psychologists for the first time, and the early results are not pretty. The bottom line as reported by MSNBC.com: “‘Helicopter’ parents have neurotic kids.”

Students with helicopter parents tended to be less open to new ideas and actions, as well as more vulnerable, anxious and self-consciousness, among other factors, compared with their counterparts with more distant parents.

“We have a person who is dependent, who is vulnerable, who is self-conscious, who is anxious, who is impulsive, not open to new actions or ideas; is that going to make a successful college student?” [researcher Neil] Montgomery said. “No, not exactly, it’s really a horrible story at the end of the day.”

About ten percent of college students surveyed had helicopter parents, girls much more so than boys: 13% of females versus 5% of males. Mothers were mainly the ones hovering.

Looking back at college orientation, I am grateful that my Mom left as soon as the car was emptied and the new Macintosh was unpacked. I remember wanting her to stay a little longer, but she found the just right time to go, when it was time, even though I didn’t realize it yet.

It’s much easier to see hovering in other people than to admit it ourselves, but I can already start to see a glimmer of how hard it will be when my daughter grows up and leaves the nest. That’s a big reason that I wanted to create Courageous Parents, Confident Kids–Letting Go So You Both Can Grow, to prepare parents for these transitions by providing essential skills that many parents are never exposed to, such as how to teach your child personal safety skills, or how to gain the courage to let our kids solve their own problems, without our own fear or ego getting in the way.

So what if in your private moments you do realize and admit that you are a helicopter Mom, and that your kids are not as self-sufficient, capable, and challenged as they could be?

My advice is to start by looking at the big picture: really think about what do you want your newly launched eighteen-year old to be able to do for herself or himself?

And then build a bridge from where you are now to where you need to be, starting now and using the time you have. Maybe you have two months, maybe you have ten years before you reach the milestone of a child leaving home. The beautiful thing is that you can teach a five-year-old to wash windows with a spray bottle of water and a rag; an nine-year-old to do laundry and to walk to school by herself, a twelve-year-old to cook a family meal or to work out problems within a friendship.

If your seventeen-year-old can’t cook or do his own laundry or balance his checkbook, then you have a busy year ahead of you.

Life coach Martha Beck has written that mothers of special-needs kids are taught from a very early age to parent according to the principal “Never do for your child what he can do for himself.” She learned that lesson raising her son Adam, who has Down Syndrome, and I think that is profound advice for all parents. We address this in depth in Courageous Parents, Confident Kids, through Amy McCready’s chapter “The Power of Personal Significance for Kids of All Ages.”

Unpack your parental fear and worry, and examine them for the truly important nuggets of wisdom that may be there. If you are concerned that your teenager cannot handle a dicey dating situation, that calls for serious attention and action. Or if your child’s summer camp is not providing enough supervision, or does not address bullying, that also demands your involvement.

On the other hand, if you feel that it’s “your job” to worry about everyone, as though you are “just worrying to keep the airplane aloft,” that is a corrosive habit that creates needless chronic stress in your life. Turn down the static of constant worry and you’ll be better able to hear the clear bell of genuine concern that demands your full attention and action.

And finally, make sure you are doing enough for yourself. I know that’s easier said than done but it’s the heart of the Mojo Mom part of this prescription. Live through your own life and accomplishments rather than depending on your kids to reflect their glory back on you. In our family, that has meant not only keeping up two flexible yet demanding careers, but it’s also meant that both my husband and I have started taking music lessons of our own, while agreeing to let our daughter “retire” after creating a solid foundation of three years of piano. I found myself saying today, “I wish I had her raw talent. It makes me want to ask her, “if you don’t want to use that, can I have it?” But I will just have to settle for taking on my own modest musical ability and burnishing it to the best shine I possibly can, through a lot of practice!

I did eventually get into gear, which looked like doing laundry and attacking ants in the kitchen–some tasks just cannot be ignored–but I have not written the epic blog post I had planned. It is swimming in my mind but I just can’t do it justice right now.

Here’s the good news: I am reading Ariel Gore‘s latest book Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, and it turns out she may be saying what I wanted to say better than I could. She is incisive and says things that sound revolutionary because they go against the conventional wisdom but make so much sense you think, why hadn’t I seen it that way before?

So stay tuned…I hope to finish her book in the next day or so and then maybe the blog post will materialize.

The fact that I have even written this much will have to count as success for today!

We all know that as kids get older, they crave more responsibility and independence. They also need to develop a strong sense of accountability for their own actions.

In our current culture, this can be especially challenging, as kids and young teens today may not be given as much responsibility as they once naturally encountered on a family farm, household, or business.

I’ll be hosting a free live webinar this Wednesday evening, in which Amy McCready of Positive Parenting Solutions (and a Courageous Parents, Confident Kids contributor) will address these issues and more.

We’ll be gathering online for this live training from 9 to 10 PM Eastern time this Wednesday, May 26th

Amy McCready will share her insights about “Choices & Consequences –-How to Foster Independence AND Accountability” in your family.

I am the host of the webinar and I’ll be participating in the live chat with all the participants, while Amy McCready presents the training via live video.

The training is offered to you at no cost but we need you to register in order to participate. To learn more and sign up, just follow the registration link you’ll find on my MojoMom.com Classes & Events page.

Feel free to share this class info with friends! If you have older Elementary kids and especially rising Middle Schoolers this training is for you. If your kids are younger you may want to join us for a preview of things to come.

Mojo Girl: Mom, I heard a myth that if you say Freddy Krueger’s name three times before going to bed, he’ll come and kill you while you are asleep.

[Brief interlude where I explain that as her Mom I can't even go there with such a gruesome discussion overall, but then I try to dig out as best I can with logic....]

Mojo Mom: It’s just a made-up story. You know that Freddy Krueger is not real. It’s like, if someone told you that if you said Darth Vader’s name three times, he’d come get you. You know that could not happen.

Mojo Girl: But Darth Vader couldn’t get me because he’s already DEAD! PSYCH! I win!

These stories and characters do seem real to us…even if these iconic fables are pure fantasy they play a genuine role in our lives. How about Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz, and then the witches in Wicked? How about Harry Potter? These iconic stories and characters are a real cultural force.

This month people are talking about the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, and where they were when they first saw it. I can tell you that I can mark my true transition to adolescence embarrassingly precisely to the summer of 1980, age eleven turning twelve, the summer when Empire came out. At first I was really mad that Princess Leia gave up on cute and adorable Luke (not yet her brother!) for that jerk Han Solo. Somehow over the course of the summer and seeing the movie again and again (the first and last movie we had on bootleg video) I came to appreciate the bad boy charms of Han Solo and never looked back at my crush on whiny old farm boy Luke.

So that brings me to Lost, an obsession that has sustained me with six years of storytelling. I was not that interested in Lost when I first heard about it. It was a busy time in my life and I didn’t have a lot of time to take on a new television show, but for some reason I decided to watch the first ten minutes of the pilot. Jack’s eye opened, he walked through a quiet yet disorienting scene in the jungle (a Labrador retriever, a sneaker in the tree?)–then Jack emerged from the bamboo and into the plane crash disaster in the beach, and the show had me, and I have never looked back. The way that the story engaged us in the fiery midst of the action rather than introducing us to the characters one by one and then having the crash at the end, like any conventional story would have done, is the key element that drew me in with such curiosity. We were drawn in by the life and death situation and then came to care and wonder who these people were and how they would survive. That structural choice was carried through the whole series with the flashbacks, forwards, and sideways.

I’ve had many Lost theories over the years, and they’ve pretty much all been wrong, but it’s been an interesting mental exercise to puzzle over every step of the way. I’ve savored it like a long-lasting caramel and probed it like the socket left by a lost tooth.

My Lost obsession may have even helped me grow as a writer, seeing what worked for the show and what didn’t (dead-end distractions with Nikki and Paulo, stalling the forward momentum of the story by locking main characters up in bear cages). I would like to think that it doesn’t matter to me exactly what answers we get tonight as long as they pull it into a satisfying conclusion. My main worry at this point is that they really have not left enough time to resolve the ambitious Sideways world storyline.

Losthas pulled in the audience like no other cultural story I have been part of–if you are a disagreeing professional Trekkie please don’t flame me! From message boards to professional commentators like Jeff Jensen on EW.com, to Comic-Con panels, the conversation about Lost has taken on a life of its own. I am just waiting to see which university gives Jeff Jensen and honorary Ph.D. to make an honest “Doc Jensen” out of him.

So I am going to suggest an ending to the series that really honors the way the show has crossed over into the real world.

Spoiler alert! I am making this all up! If I turn out to be right in any way, shape, or form, it will be as much of a surprise to me as it is to you!

This would be controversial and surely upset a lot of people, but in my mind I see a conclusion where the Island timeline and Sideways timeline have to be reset yet again with a cataclysmic Jughead-like reboot. But this time when it goes off, the castaways are all brought back into a totally new timeline, one in which….they are actors trying out for the show Lost.

Gimmicky, perhaps. But what really blows my mind about this idea is that all along we’ve assumed that we’ve been living in the same timeline/universe as they castaways. We think we have lived through their September 22, 2004 when their plane takes off from Sydney. But what if all along we’ve been living in a post-reboot timeline, and didn’t even know it? What if it could happen again? How stable is our own reality? And no matter what, how different will our own personal worlds feel when Lost ends.

In twenty years I hope that I can tell you all about where I was for the Lost finale. As you can see from the invitation, I have friends who are as fanatical about Lost as I am. (Seat 4F, First Class window seat. Nice, except that part about the plane crashing!)

In the meantime I look forward to ordering the most ginormous box set of DVDs the show’s creators are willing to put out, and I would be perfectly happy to go back to the pilot and start watching season one all again. Imagine how different it will all look now that we’ve seen the whole story.

What are your thoughts about the end of Lost? What has to happen tonight for you to be satisfied? And if it’s not a perfect ending, how can we get over any sense of disappointment as soon as possible, to remember what a great ride we’ve had for six seasons? Abrams, Cuse and Lindelof have given us such amazing season finales, especially the Season Three “getting rescued by the Freighter Folks” storyline intertwined with “it’s been flash-forwards….and WE HAVE TO GO BACK.” I am hoping to be blown away tonight, and prepared to forgive all if the finale itself falls short of our completely impossible to meet expectations!