Moms, you should parent in whatever way works for your family and spend less time worrying about other people's perceptions of how you're doing.

Choosing elements for your wedding day should be fun, but these choices won't make any difference in the stuff that matters. For better or worse, you'll end that day married to your partner, and that's the truly exciting part.

Learn to accept your spouse's point of view, and allow them their emotions because you'd expect the same thing in return.

I love my boys more than anything on this earth.

I love my kids. They are the greatest thing I've ever done with my life, and they bring me joy every day.

Did I really want to teach my children that a list of successes is the most valuable legacy to leave behind? I absolutely did not.

If you know cookies are your weakness, don't even bring them in the house because, like me, you will eat them.

Once I actually learned how to eat well and exercise regularly so the weight would stay off, it was really easy to do so after my third son was born.

When I got pregnant with my second son, I still hadn't lost weight from the first, and since I came from a long line of overweight people, I was terrified that I was quickly going to become one of them.

My big brother Ryan was funny and unfailingly kind. He was one of the most talented musicians you might encounte, and had a prodigious ability to pick up any instrument and play it by ear within the span of a single day.

The truth is, if we abuse ourselves with too much work and too little play, our body is eventually going to fight back, and the results can be terrible.

I have immense respect for anyone with a physical deformity and the courage and confidence it takes just to go out in the world.

If you don't find yourself attractive, how do you expect your partner to?

Planning and reminiscing can be a good thing... in moderation.

It may seem counterintuitive to some people to take an entire morning or afternoon to prepare food for the week, but believe me, it's not. You'll even find that you eat much healthier when you've planned your meals ahead.

As moms, we have so much on our plates. We're busy, and our family depends on us for a lot of things.

Bacon, bacon, oh I love me some bacon! It's the secret ingredient to all my favorite recipes. I also could have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Some of the best presents I get from my children for Mother's Day are homemade. It makes me so happy to see the time and effort they put into each gift.

An awesome thing about starting your own business? There's no one there to tell you what to do! But that, you might quickly discover, is a double-edged sword. If you're not careful, you won't shower for four days straight, and you'll spend half your time researching 'girly, stylish office' on Pinterest instead of getting any real work done.

If we want to talk about Gross Natural Product, we have to talk about the King of Bhutan's index of Gross National Happiness, too. Certainly I have found, as many travellers before me, that people in the poorest places are often the readiest to shower me, from an affluent country, with hospitality and kindness.

I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.

I think the world is always going to be as diverse as it always has been.

It's only by taking myself away from clutter and distraction that I can begin to hear something out of earshot and recall that listening is much more invigorating than giving voice to all the thoughts and prejudices that anyway keep me company twenty-four hours a day.

In Vancouver, in Sydney and in Orange County, we live among fluorescent stores and streets so brightly lit that you can read a book after dark; in other places across our global body, there are blackouts and curfews every night.