Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence.

Eating among the French certainly affected me. After a few years here, I gave up most of my selective food habits.

We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces.

The overarching conventional wisdom - what everyone from government experts to my French girlfriends take as articles of faith - is that restrictive diets generally don't make you healthier or slimmer. Instead, it's best to eat a variety of high-quality foods in moderation and pay attention to whether you're hungry.

Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide.

When my kids correct my cultural missteps, I sometimes suspect that they're not embarrassed, they're gleeful.

The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging.

I've never gotten a good idea while checking Twitter or shopping.

One of the great joys of a creative life is that your observations and loose moments aren't lost forever; they live in your work.

We're understandably worried that staring at screens all day, and blogging about our breakfasts, is turning America into a nation of narcissists. But the opposite might be true.

I spent most of my adolescence feeling awkward but never once mentioned it.

I guess we're all supposed to get used to living in a more dangerous world.

Around my neighborhood, I'm known as the American who talks to her computer while she types.

When I moved to Europe 12 years ago, my biggest concern was whether I'd ever speak decent French. Practically every American I knew came to visit, many saying they dreamed of living here, too.

The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality.

Early childhood offerings vary, but everywhere in Europe and in Canada, they're far more generous than in the United States. Ukrainian dads may not change enough diapers, but their government offers paid maternity leave; practically free preschool; and per-baby payments equivalent to eight months of an average salary.

America's parenting customs can shock foreigners.

I gradually understood why European mothers aren't in perpetual panic about their work-life balance and don't write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them - and doing it competently.

How hard or easy it is to raise kids, especially while working, is a big part of people's well-being everywhere.

When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump?

My husband is so upset by President Trump's scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims, he refuses to even visit the United States.

I had applied to become French - or, rather, Franco-American, as I'm now a dual citizen - partly because I could: I'd lived and paid taxes here for long enough.

Before Donald Trump took office, optimism about his presidency was the lowest of any president-elect since at least the 1970s.

When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, 'The optimism.' I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are 'It's not possible' and 'Hell is other people.' I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper.