Pamela Alma Weymouth

I’ll spare my sons the airing of our dirty Pandemic laundry — but suffice it to say that the cage of my house was rattling this week and I was sure that I just could not survive one more hour trapped in our messy shelter-in-place containment unit with my teenage twin packages-of-delight. I am sure that my sons and our neighbors feel the same way. I’m thinking of installing a padded scream room. 

Pamela Alma Weymouth

With only two weeks until Christmas, Chanukah already underway, and the cold and dark descending  finding joy seems a big ask. A part of me wants to say: How dare you put up that little puffy Santa sleigh on your roof! Don’t you know that people are dying out there? Don’t you know that your cheery lights just make me feel more grumpy and blue? 

Pamela Alma-Weymouth

Just as soon as I think I’ve survived Thanksgiving there go the Christmas trees and the sparkling lights reminding me that another holiday is upon us. It seems odd to be celebrating anything while Covid resurges, businesses are shuttering their doors, hospitals are filling up.

Still we must put on a good face for the kids and try to find some way to buoy our spirits even if we are feeling Grinchy.

Pamela Alma-Weymouth

For me Thanksgiving and the looming holiday festivities bring up a lot of shoulds. The expectations that I ought to have the perfect Hallmark family, the perfect partner, the perfect children all decked out in white for our holiday beach photo that will be airbrushed to hide my grey roots, my stress wrinkles, the pregnancy weight that never came off my chin, and the little Frida Kahlo mustache that middle-age has gifted me with.

Pamela Alma-Weymouth

I am a native New Yorker, born to a family of cynical women. As a result I am an unlikely candidate for a gratitude practice. When my twin teenage boys head off to the skate park I go through a mental checklist of the possible tragedies that might befall them. Inside my head I hear the German babysitter who raised me saying “Watch out! You’re going to crack your head open!”

Pamela Alma-Weymouth

We all know that exercise is free mood-boosting therapy. Aerobic exercise, or anything that makes you break a sweat (other than hot flashes, parenting or standing over a hot stove) releases all kinds of feel good brain chemicals--for free!