Yesterday, Diff’rent Strokes star Gary Coleman, 42, died after suffering a brain hemorrhage on Wednesday, May 26. On Thursday, he slipped into unconsciousness and was put on life support. Yesterday, Friday, his family took him off life support and stood by his side while he died.

As soon as I read about his death, I posted a link to the story on my Facebook page with a simple note that said, “Crap. I feel sad about this.”

Immediately, people started making jokes. My friend David suggested that all flags should be flown at 4’2″ for at least a week. My friend TJ asked, “With this tragic loss, how can you not feel a bit shorted?”

Last spring, shortly after my novel, Banned for Life, was published, my actor friend Jeremy Lowe sent me this photo via Facebook.

You know how sometimes things fall apart? Or at least it seems like they do? Like you normally deal with life’s one-two punches with grace and humor and a healthy perspective, but for whatever reason lately you haven’t been able to stay on stable footing, and your perspective slants everything sideways and you regress back to childhood? I’ve been having a run of days like that.

I won’t deliver unto you the litany of my trials and tribulations. Work stuff. Home stuff. Kid stuff. Financial apocalypse. Exorcisms. A 17-year-old pregnant married daughter who is going to give birth any day. And so on.

I’ve noticed when you’re strong and you smile through the bullshit, people tell you what a good job you’re doing. Keep it up. Good work. But when your confidence wavers – when your stiff upper lip quivers – that’s when you find out who your champions are.  I told a friend of mine the other day, “I woke up today and realized this is what I became when I grew up.” He told me I needed to change my story. Which I get. But sometimes, man… Sometimes when you lose your footing, it can be really hard to find it again.

I wake up before 7:00 on the morning of Tuesday, June 4, 1996 and know three things instantly: I’m in labor, I have to return the car to that awful man, and I have to go buy another car. If I don’t, I won’t have any way to get myself to the hospital. I am twenty years old.

The pain in my belly and lower back is intense and I flop over onto my knees and bounce up and down, which wakes up my roommate Tim, who sort of doubles as my boyfriend.

“I’m in labor,” I tell him.

“Are you sure?” he asks, having just spent the last week listening to me declare the same concern regularly. Tim’s on standby, as is my sister, Kim, who has a flight arranged from Kansas City. The moment she hears word that I’m at the hospital delivering she will grab her packed luggage and the diaper bag she’s had waiting, probably since the moment I agreed to let her, and her new husband, adopt my child.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I tell Tim. “I’m going to go buy a car.”

As “Friday Bloody Friday,” Duke Haney‘s triumphant return to these pages, has vanished (that’s a Peewee reference) from the “Most Read” list, where it has sat in kingly glory like Yertle the Turtle for the last ten days, usurped by a far inferior piece called “Eponymous,” I think it’s time to clarify something:

I have seven-year-old twin boys. I’ve been a single mom for almost three years, and in the time leading up to my separation, we had a family bed. I mean, the boys had their own room, but most nights we slept together. This made sense being that I breastfed them until they were two, but it was also a parenting choice that made sense to my co-parent and me on a personal level. The family bed.

As time has gone on – as the boys have gotten older – it’s made more and more sense to redefine boundaries. We talk very openly in our house, and the phrase “personal bubble” is used to describe limit setting and expectations. Nonetheless, I remain steadfast in my belief that the human body isn’t something to be ashamed of, and in many ways the boys are still too young to sexualize it. We have basic rules of courtesy in the house, like to knock on the door before entering bathrooms or bedrooms, but we don’t always remember to shut the door in the first place.

So, imagine my surprise when, as I was getting dressed one day recently, one of my sons came in and, for reasons I’ll never understand, lifted up my breasts, looked at me, and said, “Didn’t these use to be up here?”

Cue the sound of a needle skipping off a record.

Cue the sound of my door closing. Forever.

Mom’s bubble just got bigger.