Guess what? Like Madonna, I am stumbling, shaking, smashing, and dancing my way through the effects of my divorce. From the interviews I've read, she's not having an easy time of it.

Even though it seems she'll hang onto most of her cool hundreds of millions, someone recently told me that prosperity isn't how much money you have, but how "well off" you feel. Honestly, if that's the case, then I'm rich!

The holidays can be a crazy time. Self-sacrifice and stress can lead to negative emotions, and leave you feeling vulnerable and tired. People like Madonna keep their heads screwed on straight by staying creative and expressive. They always remember to make time for themselves, because if you're not good to yourself, then you won't be good for anyone else.

This month, Madonna's on tour with her band. She says that keeps her from feeling too sorry for herself and all the messy divorce proceedings.

My band's on break this fall, because my keyboard player just had throat surgery and is on vocal rest. So the only tour I'm going to do right now is the one I'm taking with my kids on Thanksgiving.

We're not quite the Partridge Family, and we're not riding on a bus, but the shrink-wrapped, pink Housewives On Prozac-mobile will head north toward New Hampshire tomorrow for a week of family fun. The kids and I will be singing at the top of our lungs all the way.

This is a trip we really look forward to. The only difference is, this year, there is a new man in my life. He's my prize for sitting tight for five long years and not jumping into another full-time relationship, or marriage.

I know I'll catch some grief. What would a family get-together be, without the teasing?

They probably feel I've introduced them to thousands of men through the years. I'm afraid they'll be whispering behind my back: My goodness, here she is with another one!

Okay. I haven't written about the boyfriend in a while. Truth be told, I haven't wanted to jinx it. Things have been going so smoothly I sometimes wonder if there's something wrong?

In the past, I've kept my finger on the pulse of my relationships. If the heart wasn't racing so hard one of us was in danger of a heart attack, then the relationship didn't seem real. It was all emergency-room experiences.

Reality was at such a high pitch, such a fevered pace, there wasn't any down time or room for ambiguity.

Maybe it's maturity. Maybe I'm just exhausted post-divorce, but my new boyfriend and I have a rhythm that's positively lethargic. I'm loving it.

Here's the 411: I'm so busy rushing around with kids, job, music and meetings, that when I make a date with Mr. Right these days, I'm finding peaceful relaxation, safety, security, and the warm-fuzzies are what I'm looking for. Not a racing pulse.

First, I never worry where I stand. He thinks I'm wonderful all the time. Second, whenever I ask, "Would you like to go to such and such?" his response is always, "Are you going to be there?"

He continually assures me that the largest measure of his happiness has to do with being near me.

I remember when I was in my 20s, writing about how I needed a wife. That just goes to show how lowly the position was back then, because I was writing about needing someone to do my laundry, scrub my floors, and cook my dinners.

While Mr. Right isn't angling for the wifey position, he isn't above helping me with household chores. And, he does yard work.

Now you're saying that this sounds too good to be true.

Although divorce has damaged me to the extent that I find it hard to think of a romantic future of more than a single day, I can honestly say that, from a new-age perspective, you really can dream your way to reality.

According to domaintools.com there are 78 million registered dot-coms on the Internet. That's one way for companies and people to stake their claims. Others have Facebook or MySpace.

How else do people stake claims? During the settling of the West, they could claim large pieces of land by:

● Arriving in Oregon in the 1840s, where a married couple could get 640 acres of land, at no charge, as long as they settled there and improved it.

● Settling on and improving 160 acres in places like Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas under the Homestead Act of 1862.

● Scrambling from a starting line to claim a piece of farmland or town lots during the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.

Staking a claim, whether virtual or real, is part of our human nature. During divorce, the rush to get a property settlement and a distribution of assets is a painful negotiation. I suppose on some gross level, even children may be treated like part of the distribution of assets.

The push really comes to shove on things like holidays and vacations. Which parent will get the child or children on any given holiday? That decisions has lasting implications.

During my marriage we traveled a lot. We spent summers on Fire Island, sometimes for a month or more. Christmas was always in Jamaica - again sometimes for several weeks.

After we separated, negotiations between me and my ex were hourly, daily, weekly, but especially celebration specific. These haggling sessions were volatile and frustrating. Every hour I spent away from my kids felt like part of me was being ripped out.

But, over time, things have smoothed out. Both of us have established new traditions, values and ways of paying for things. It helps that most of the specifics were spelled out in our divorce agreement, but areas of interpretation are bound to arise.

Hindsight is 20/20, or so the saying goes. Another way of saying that is "Monday morning quarterback," meaning someone who opines on just how the quarterback could have won the game, after the game is over. Or, to get hoity-toity, as the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.

Last weekend I traveled to New Hampshire to watch my oldest son's rugby club play their final games. They got hammered, yet at game's end I was caught offguard when several of the players (including my son) suddenly turned red-eyed while hugging, weeping, and sniffling.

These six-foot, 240-pound young men, lurching toward their adult lives, seemed to think nothing of slamming into the other team's players, only to break down in sobs after the fourth quarter.

They were bummed to lose, and to see the season come to a close.

Lunching together after the game, my son was sweetly reflective and swept both of us up in a tide of sentimentality. I never know exactly what he is thinking, except for a hint here or there. He's 19, so there's always a certain amount guesswork involved. But he kept saying how much he loved me and how much he missed the family.

I found myself unexpectedly longing for the good old days (I'm sure there were some) at the beginning of my marriage and in the years leading up to my son's birth. When my son alluded to his childhood, I guiltily remembered how brief that period really was.

My ex was at the game last weekend, and had spent the previous evening touring the campus, and hanging out with our son.

Our brief greeting on the rugby field was awkward. We seemed more like a strangers than two people who had spent 18 years married. I assured myself that distance was a good thing.

Still, there have been times during the last few days when I've thought how much lovelier things would be if we could all just live together as family again.

Last Saturday in Toronto, the Motherhood Movement was officially launched. Camera in hand, juggling cables and questions, I shot 30 hours of film and video, from the hip, as I tried to get answers from some of the world's foremost feminists. The subjects included mothering, violence, militarism, war, and social justice; mothers for equal rights; virtual mothering; feminists for a gift economy; maternal depression, and queer parenting.

"Wow," you say? Or, maybe "Why"?

Perhaps I'm trying to sort through my own confusion and ambivalence about terms like "feminist mother,"  "single mother," and "girlfriend," and to capture this unique moment in Herstory.

After three days at the conference, sponsored by the Association for Research on Mothering at York University in Toronto, I was inspired and exhausted.

Let me say, I was the only one there with pink hair.

Some 300 women met in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, to initiate the suffragist movement and win the right for women to vote, a right that did not come to be until 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment. This gathering was much larger, the first International Motherhood Movement meeting. Here were women who cared passionately about their roles as workers, wives, and mothers. What's amazing is that the subject of partnering was just as hot as the subject of parenting.

There wasn't one attendee who spoke of wanting to erase the entire male population. Generally speaking, participants had a warm spot for the opposite sex.

With 20 organizations and hundreds of individuals presenting papers, studies and speeches, there were, of course, bound to be differences.

I am past the age of being excited about baring it all in a bathing suit, or less. Statistics show I'm not alone.  

Four out of five American women say they're dissatisfied with the way they look.

On any given day, almost half of the women in the United States are on a diet. The average American woman is 5 foot 4 inches and weighs 140 pounds. Seen that on TV lately?

Tonight I'm going to be in a situation where I will be watching myself, on camera, at the preview of the film Momz Hot Rocks about the origins of the mom rock movement. It's a special sneak preview, with limited access, but still, my friends and neighbors will be there, and I'm hoping there won't be a sneak preview of my derrière.

I haven't seen the rockumentary yet, so I don't know what filmmaker Kate Perotti snuck in there. She did follow me and the other women in Housewives on Prozac for the better part of two years. I seem to remember a few indiscreet moments on camera, but all I can do is hope the lighting was bad.

Oh, and did I mention this? My new boyfriend's coming to the preview. So far I've managed to keep most of my flesh under wraps and in the dark. Hey, that's the way I like it. We're still getting to know each other and a little sense of mystery goes a long way.

Besides, I don't want that romping in the hay thing at this point in my life. I want loving, steady, sweet, kind and respectful.

In the process of growing up and growing older, I have become a softer, rounder, fuller version of myself. Learning to like the new me is a lot like learning to like the old me; fraught with pitfalls. Basically, it's not that easy to just "like" yourself.

This was a busy whirl of a week with travel, flirtation, airport fantasies and lots and lots of moms. In 2008 Jennifer Kampmier founded www.IndyBabyExpo.com, after dumping her online dating biz, and falling in love with a baby — her own, of course.

Her baby fair is an extravaganza of merchandise for moms-to-be and new moms with tots. Even though my children are way into high school, Jennifer and I synced up over the whole Mamapalooza and Moms Who Rock phenomenon and decided to team up for Spring 2009 events. So I jetted out to meet her in person.

We connected right away. As we sat on her deck into the wee hours, with the Indiana moon hovering, we spilled our stories of men, marriage, online dating, babies and being women entrepreneurs.

Past midnight and way into drinks our stories came spilling out, and I knew I had found a kindred spirit. For someone in the mothering expo biz, Jenn has made independent choices that I admire and respect.

She's single by choice, and raising her 3-year-old son, Zane, on her own. Long term plans for her mean growing her business and perhaps ultimately moving to far off places so she and Zane could have a chance to experience other cultures.

I met and stayed with her family for the weekend, and got to chat with her delightful parents, who've been married for 36 years.

As self-described flower children in the late 70s, they bought a mobile home and moved their young family around America. Jenn is in her early 30s. I'm 51. Even though, technically, we're different generations, and our choices have led us down different paths, we had both read every single one of the same books on health, wealth, spirit and empowerment.

When our conversation got deep, our philosophies turned to alternative ways of thinking and being.

My best girlfriend finally broke it off with the married guy she'd been seeing for the past year. Of course she didn't know he was married when she started seeing him, despite suspicious signs.

That doesn't bode well for any of us.

While warnings seem redundant, and books like Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's He's Just Not That Into You and Jamie Callan's Hooking Up or Holding Out spell out exactly what not to look for, it bears repeating: If a guy looks sweet, but acts sneaky, you should probably be wary. Has to run to catch a train after work? A tan line on his ring finger? Wants to meet for lunch, and go to hotels? Duh!

Even if it's just that little voice in the back of your head that keeps whispering, "This doesn't feel right," then it's probably not right.

The Internet is a constant source of distraction and deception. I've heard of more guys who either get hooked on cyberspace porn, or start to roam in places they shouldn't be. (Why do you think David Duchovny is being treated for sex addiction?)

It seems there's a web site now for almost everything. One of my "happily married" guy pals just met someone from a site that specializes in married couples seeking discreet affairs. A quick Google search, and philanderers.com is just a mouse click away.

My friend insists he's only looking for fun, not out to destroy his marriage, but I know differently. We FWW women can smell divorce coming a million miles away.

Because, divorce stinks; it smells like sex, lies, and the Internet.

Mama's time has come. From the hills of Hollywood to the halls of the White House, there are mamas in the limelight. Instead of simply acknowledging the fact that any accolades Mom receives are long overdue, why not join the growing boom of females who insist on everything from paid maternity leave to rock festivals that feature female entertainment?

I refuse to believe the current movement is a response to the 1950s stereotype that kept June Cleaver in the kitchen with her lipstick on. And I keep hoping the momentum is bigger than an angry backlash of feminists who refuse to make room for softer, gentler versions of themselves. 

Most of all, I pray that while the idea of "family values" is of great concern to many of us, those values are not determined by a right-wing government.

We want different things. The point is, for the first time in many years, we are mobilizing to want something. The common thread between us is that we are reaching out to redefine what it is to be a modern mother.

For the first time in (her)story, we are single mothers, rocker mothers, soccer mothers, alpha moms, hot moms, and intellectuals, all taking on new work, new life definitions.

I am totally psyched to see a dialogue begin and, the sensationalistic Mommy wars aside, the truth is that we can all get along.

I started out as a mother and a wife replicating what I had witnessed growing up in middle-America. When my children were born in New York City from 1989 to 1994, there was a dawning of a new consciousness: a network of midwife-assisted births, natural parenting magazines, and higher consciousness baby groups.

An informal poll of my like-minded sisters and girlfriends tells me 80 percent of them are back in the dating game, chomping at the bit to vote in the November election, and briskly moving their money from dangerous places, like mutual funds, and into safe places, like gold. Or crisply turning it into Euros.

Liv Tyler and I, however, are on another path. At least that's what I feel after reading today's celebrity headlines. The pouty, pretty actress was reflecting on her split with Spacehog guitarist Royston Langdon, equating it to "the loss of everything."

Tyler says, "I feel neurotic, like Woody Allen. Sometimes I just feel like a crab without a shell."

Okay. Do I dare admit that I can relate?

Women often feel lost without their men, even when the relationship sucks. It can be lonely trying to make the house, bank account, kids, and social life all work.

With the whole financial and political world reeling, I feel paralyzed. Even though most of the times I manage very well, there are moments, even weeks, when I feel myself totter.

During these episodes, my money doesn't feel safe, and neither does my state of mind. It's a little too late for me to correct the fault lines in my newly embraced financial portfolio. Divorce has left me not only poorer, but also woefully ignorant when it comes to investments and how fortunes are made and lost.

I can only hope to survive by worshiping at the church of Suze Orman (who preaches that a woman, or at least she, needs only one pair of earrings) and FWW's own Jean Chatzky, especially her advice to go on a money diet (oh god, another diet), and her instructions to always open your financial statements, which may be just too much right now.

A year ago, I was flying high.