Let me count the ways. In reverse order of importance, they are: 5. The Food. OMG. My friend Karen Hester makes the most amazing pies, including a crumbly topped apple pie and yummy pumpkin with whipped cream. This year, I made a yam, pineapple, and apple casserole....
I first met Madeline Sharples at a writing workshop at Esalen. I was immediately drawn to her calm, empathetic manner, her beauty, and her poems. We quickly learned that we shared some important life experiences - we were both grieving mothers and both of us were...
Maya’s 19-year-old heart was keeping Fernando alive but as I held him I realized in a new, deeper way that Maya herself was never coming back.
Hell, yes! Tig Notaro, interviewed today by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” proves you can laugh and cry instantaneously. In a now famous stand-up routine she delivered at an LA theater Largo, in early August just days after her breast cancer diagnosis, Notaro broke...
Last year in this country more than 6,500 grieving families said yes to organ donation. For 2011 we know many thousands more will give the gift of life. Among them: the family of Christina Taylor Green, the youngest person to lose her life in the Tuscon shootings....
In the last 24 hours I have learned of two families who recently lost young children - their tragedies came at me out of the blue. I find myself wishing I could sit with the parents and listen to their stories. Since my 19-year-old daughter died suddenly in 1992,...
Everyone seems to tap friends for money to cure AIDS, leukemia, or breast cancer - or in my case, cystic fibrosis. Lately, I've been raising funds to support a walk-a-thon sponsored by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Why CF? Because my 22-month-old neighbor Lily has...