There was never a doubt in my mind when it came to wanting children. Among other things, I always knew I wanted to be a mother. 

Three years into my first marriage, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to conceive a child.  I was one of/… Read full post »

I went to support the one I loved.  I went to support myself.  It was dusk in the City by the Bay and the soft orangish golden hues of a day that was reluctant to say good night illuminated the city like halos. 

Like everyone, there have been times when the insults, gossips, falsehoods, judgments and the finger pointing, some expected and some not, have come hurling at me like fireballs.  My skin and inner core weren’t thick enough to absorb the blazing burning of the looks and opini/… Read full post »

“My life is a nightmare.”  “The drama never ends.”  “I can’t take this another minute.”  “It’s just one crisis after another.”  These are the things I say to myself when life doesn’t g/… Read full post »

I love myself.  There I said it.  Without guilt, reservation or hesitation.  I say it with passion and commitment.  And I say it with humility and simplicity.  Sometimes I say it moment to moment and sometimes, the heart knows and no words need to be said for days.&nb… Read full post »

I woke up Friday morning and didn’t remember.  As the early morning warm sleep slipped away, I could feel the familiar cold dull pulse of a heart confused and the sadness of the unknowing came rushing in like an avalanche.  I got up slowly and reluctantly, feeling as if/… Read full post »

 (This is a modified repost I wrote four years ago)

I grew up on the East Coast and my father made the commute from Connecticut into New York City for many years.  Since the horrific events of September 11, 2001, I’ve made it a point to travel when I/… Read full post »

The older I get the less I know.  I’m not as sure as I used to be, about anything.  I seemed to/… Read full post »

Last month in the wedding month of June, I received the Email in the middle of an ordinary morning, a work day filled with clients, finishing up an article and tending to the more mundane tasks of  life like doing laundry, running errands and paying bills.

The Email stood out from… Read full post »

What’s the rush?  Why does everyone seem to be in such a hurry?   I’m getting to the point when I have a conversation with an actual person (as opposed to hearing from them via text or email) where I feel like I better spill out whatever it is that needs to… Read full post »

Men like John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Jimmy Swaggart, Larry Craig, that delusional governor from South Carolina who lied about hiking to be with his South American mistress, and most recently, Anthony Weiner are really giving men a bad… Read full post »

Can you say, "Yee Haw"?

This season of “American Idol” produced some of the best talent and the most diversity in all of the combined seasons of "American Idol".  But if you just tuned in last night for the finale/… Read full post »

What I’m about to say may be considered shocking, blasphemous and puzzling given what I do for a living.   But I’m going to say it anyway.  Granted, it may be a temporary phase, but I pretty much hate most self-help books.  Yeah, despise them.  

Bu… Read full post »

Artwork by Monica Stewart    

Her face was as black and shiny as the newly laid tar that had been laid out on the endowed summer streets of Greenwich, Connecticut, home to the whitest of the wealthy.  She sat, alone, at our kitchen table quietly eating/… Read full post »

“Developing News” was flashing on my TV screen this morning.  I had become numb to any kind of “breaking” news but this one caught my attention.  The “developing” story (pardon the pun) was about a new bathing suit being sold by &ld… Read full post »

Surely I'm not the only one who has a strange unexplainable memory from childhood. A mystery of a memory that to this day stands as clear and pronounced as those early morning thoughts after  a couple of cups of fresh brazen coffee.

I was only four years old, close to five,… Read full post »

To try to explain to you how huge the heart is of one of the most popular novelist of the twentieth/twenty-first century, Pat Conroy, it may help you know the story of Pat Conroy and me.

Conroy and his Southern peach of a wife, a noted author herself,… Read full post »

I watch “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”.  Don’t ask me why.  I’m sure it would take a very comfortable couch and years of psychoanalysis to try to figure it out.  I don’t have the time, p/… Read full post »

There were two positive constants in my childhood:  Laughter and Music.

My father loved music and it may be a reason he was so enamored with my mother.  She was a beautiful woman with a voice like an angel and he adored her.  Memories serenade of/… Read full post »

I recently received an email from a young woman named "Virginia".  She was asking me if there were any manners left in the world.  She was wondering if the word "etiquette" even existed.  She's a freshman in college and was alarmed to read a recent study that reported tha… Read full post »

“Thou shalt not worship false gods before Me.”

This commandment was drilled in my head while, I swear, I was still in the womb.  There were nine other commandments embedded in my brain at tender ages, as well as a host of other rules and regulations I/… Read full post »

My two sons live in the city that loves to play tricks on its visitors.  Fog pretends to be ghostly spirits that haunt the city on days one would swear its supposed to be summer, as they shiver beneath layers of clothes.

At the end of a… Read full post »