I’m so glad you’ve found me. Here’s my backstory:

I started out as a writer of computer books.

The web was just starting to catch on. I’d always dreamed of being a writer, so I parlayed my basic HTML knowledge into a book proposal which eventually led to my first how-to book: Do-It-Yourself Web Publishing With Word (Sybex, 1996).

More books followed including FrontPage For Dummies (Wiley, 1997), a bestseller that went into several editions. Remember those yellow Dummies books??

By 2005, I was a mom of two trying to keep my head above water.

My experience of parenting barely resembled what I’d oh so dutifully read in the books. I felt isolated and out of my depth.

I started a blog called Parent Hacks as a way to reach out to other parents and swap tips — the kind you only stumble upon through trial and error.

Joining the blogosphere was like stepping through a magical portal. I found the community I was longing for but hadn’t been able to find in person. It changed my life and career.

Parent Hacks grew into a well-known, award-winning resource with thousands of smart, generous readers. Over the next ten years, I published 4000+ posts, read 30,000+ comments, spoke at companies, conferences and press events, and met readers and writers from around the country. A few of them became my closest friends.

Two more books followed, then five years of podcasting and four years writing a subscription newsletter.

Now I’m back at my personal website where I keep a notebook about life beyond the empty nest, among other things.

Returning to the independent web is a homecoming of sorts, but I’m not trying to recreate the mid-2000s Internet. There’s no going back. But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck with the din and distortion of today’s Internet.

I’m building a little outpost of reality, a shared space with no ads, algorithms, or AI to get in the way.

This is my online dream house — a place to drop in for a chat or quietly keep each other company, where the whole point is to be our kind, weird, human selves.

Welcome.