Earlier this month I finished my second Avon Walk in Chicago, pounding 39.3 miles of pavement against breast cancer. We were a largely female troop of 2,200, including 276 breast-cancer survivors. Men weren’t absent, though: 329 of them joined our ranks. Together we raised $4.7 million to
Read more →I’m working on a book proposal and looking for potential sources to interview. My proposal is focused on women who have brutal first brushes with motherhood. That includes anything along the lines of: a difficult pregnancy or complicated birth postpartum depression/anxiety, postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder, postpartum obsessive-compulsive
Read more →Mom had more faith than anyone I’ve met. Unshakable faith in Christ, really. I was reminded of that recently, as I rifled through a box of nearly forgotten items from my childhood. I landed on an autograph book, a gift for my tenth birthday. Among the few
Read more →Moms who nurse their infants longer than six months experience greater financial setbacks than moms who nurse for less time, or not at all, according to new research. Tom Jacobs writes in the Pacific Standard: A study of 1,313 American women who gave birth between 1980 and
Read more →As I ventured through my first pregnancy, everything was new, including the way people talked to me. Strangers, family and friends sometimes let their opinions fly, no matter how insensitive. I recently shared this with a nurse in my OB-GYN’s office, a woman with extended experience caring
Read more →One of my oldest friends and I have built ourselves an oasis. Every Thursday night, after our impish toddlers have scampered off to bed, we call each other. We recap the week, revisit college days and our mutual interest in royal weddings, and delve into our latest
Read more →It’s Mother’s Day, and while I celebrate my own motherhood, I also think about my mom, who died almost 22 years ago. On the late-summer day when she gave up her brief-but-valiant battle against breast cancer, I prayed the crystalline skies would swallow my shock, that my
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