I find doing speeches nerve wrecking.
When you have kids, there's a tendency to put the marriage stew on the back burner and give it a quick stir now and then. But it's important to remember why you had children with this person.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom until I was about 11, when she got a job - and it was like a light came on inside her. It's not wrong to be passionate about your career. When you love what you do, you bring that stimulation back to your family.
The times you don't make it are the ones children remember, not the times you do.
Women run the small country called Home, millions of us do it in our spare time, and no one who doesn't run that small country really knows what it feels like in the dead of night when task lists jitter like tickertape through your seething brain.
My ideals told me that men and women could both go out to work and be truly equal. My children told me something more complicated, something I really didn't want to hear. Their need for me was like the need for water or light: it had a devastating simplicity to it.
Anyone suffering Downton Abbey withdrawal symptoms will find an instant tonic.
Once upon a time, I thought denial was a river in Egypt. It's actually the attitude of the Abbott government.
For the most part, I do not go out all that often, so it varies.
Write the story, take out all the good lines, and see if it still works.
A friend that ain't in need is a friend indeed.