I recently finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, Committed. As you probably know, she authored Eat, Pray, Love.
In Committed, I particularly like how Gilbert wrestles with the idea of love: What if love never finds you? What if you never find love? Can you marry your own life?
Read more...Sunday’s Denver Post ran a cover story about female genital mutilation. The article featured a 43-year-old woman from the Ivory Coast who was cut at 11 and a 26-year-old from Guinea duped and then defiled at eight. I’m very culturally tolerant, yet this type of depravity leaves me, a writer, beyond words. What struck me most about the piece was the survivors’ courage to escape their past and renew themselves through a radical reconstructive surgery performed by one very extraordinary doctor.
Read more...Here’s how a typical morning goes:
Where are my keys?
Where is my cell phone?
Read more...Last weekend I traveled back in time. I went roller discoing with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop.
The last time I did this was 1980 when Donna Summer belted out Last Dance. I was an athletic, 14-year-old freshman who used too much pink blush to disguise her adolescent insecurities. A group of friends had gone to an indoor rink in Orange, CT and
Read more...Six years ago today, my first husband, Brett, died in my arms at Calvary Hospice in Bronx, New York. As many of you know, and others have read, he had a brain tumor that finally felled him nearly seven years after he was diagnosed in 1998.
Read more...I’ve just read a jewel of a book that I want to recommend to women everywhere. Called Secrets of Powerful Women, the book is a collection of short essays, advice and musings about power – how to seize it, hold it and share it. The idea was born from the 2008 Democratic and Republican conventions at Lifetime’s Future Frontrunners Summit (which celebrated women’s voices in every corridor).
Read more...I’m nursing a bad cold or flu, I can’t yet tell which it is. What I do know is that my head feels like an embattled warrior, my voice is reminiscent of a stuffed tuba, my eyes sting, and my muscles ache and tingle at the same time. You get the picture.
Read more...Lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to tell one’s story. By which I mean, what moments shape you?
If you’re lucky, maybe small, seemingly insignificant matters are most striking: your brother’s daydreaming; how you couldn’t sit still as a child; your son’s strange aversion to gummy textures and sauces. For many others, it’s the life-defining moments that mold character and strength, fusing past, present and future.
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