Today’s beauty surprise: an angry rash on my shins on top of the weight gain that seems to have settled into my lower thighs.  When I was a teenager, I was always too fat. In my 20s, I wasn’t blonde. In my 30s, I was back to feeling fat. At 40, I remember so little… Continue reading Beautiful

I’m sick these days. Recently diagnosed with Adrenal Insufficiency (as a result of the pituitary tumor and its subsequent hemorrhaging and removal), I feel like my health is going in the wrong direction. I’m tired (bone-tired), shaky inside and out, unable to focus for very long, and generally just feeling yucky, some days way worse… Continue reading Saint Status

Since August, I’ve spent a good amount of time in doctors’ offices. To my neurosurgeon, and even to my ENT, I’m nothing special, just another brain tumor patient, a successful outcome, perhaps a notch in their belt. Whatever the case may be, they each did their job successfully, no doubt because they have had some… Continue reading What happened to you?!

On those teenage days when I would come home after a long school day and find my mother laying down on her bed - finally able to rest after spending a day working at the high school library, already quite ill and likely truly exhausted - I would lay next to her and hold her… Continue reading The Listener

You’re not alone, even when you feel you are. Success and failure Friends and isolation  Fear and pride Joy and despair  Depression  Unemployment  Anxiety Addiction Right next door. Right in our circle. Right under our nose. We share the parenting experience  If you knew what you know now, would you have done it at all?… Continue reading Parenting