Movies about incest trigger my memories and feelings about the abuse I suffered as a young girl. Precious hit me just where it hurts the most. It's difficult to say this, but Mary, the mother of Precious, really reminded me of my own mother when I was a child.

As I and all other survivors of incest know, we have to speak out in order to start healing. Mackenzie Phillips broke the silence about her long-term incestuous relationship with her father in her book, High on Arrival; Katherine Harrison did it in hers, The Kiss. I wrote about incest...

Dear MacKenzie,

I watched your "coming out" on Oprah as an incest survivor, having had a decade-long sexual relationship with your father, Papa John, and I must say it triggered a lot of my own memories. But you have one piece of your story dead wrong: it was not a...

Diane Schuler had a few tokes and who knows how much booze on the last day of her life. She then drove the wrong way on a state highway, crashed headfirst into an SUV, and killed the three men in that vehicle, along with her three young nieces, her 2-year-old...

The King is dead, long live the King. The multi-talented and charismatic performer may be gone, to live on in a digitally-recorded afterlife, but I suspect that we'll soon learn that the death of Michael Jackson the man was caused in large part by his addiction to prescription medication.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has tumbled off the wall of moral righteousness and not even all the king's men, or his fellow conservatives, may be able to put him back together again.

Sanford is merely the latest in a long line of those who have been...

Shock seems to be the word that follows the murder of a fine doctor named George Tiller, who was gunned down while ushering people into church services as his wife sang in the choir. Everyone from the President of the United States to the president of NARAL expressed shock.

Frankly,...

For most parents, the moment they first hold their newborns, they realize what lengths they might go to in order to protect their child. From fighting off lions to jumping in front of speeding cars, parents would be willing to battle any demon that they had to for the sake...

The questions that are raised by the Elizabeth Edwards' publicity tour for her book Resilience have caused a lot of back and forth comments--from "leave the poor woman alone, after all she's dying of cancer," to all the people who supported John Edwards in his run for president who now...

What Elizabeth Edwards calls resilience, some of us would call denial. No matter how much she refuses to speak (or write) the name of the "other woman" or says that finding out whether or not her husband is the father of the baby would not impact her life, there was...

Elizabeth Edwards is an undoubtedly smart woman who is living out the pain that comes from the old and outmoded beliefs about men and women that unknowingly determine our behavior . . . along with a hefty dose of denial.

Let's take the denial first. I mean, wouldn't you want...

What exactly was Megan McAllister thinking when she said, "I love my fiancé and will continue to support him throughout this legal process"? Or more accurately, what was her state of denial as she watched officers retrieve the panties of Philip Markoff's victims and the gun used to shoot one...

As horrifying as the murder of an 8-year-old is, the truly unimaginable aspect of the Melissa Huckaby case, for most people, is her alleged use of a foreign object to rape Sandra Cantu. How could a woman, a mom (!), do this to a little girl? How . . ....

No one ever expects that a 28-year-old Sunday school teacher and mother of a 5-year-old girl could sexually assault her daughter's 8-year-old playmate with a foreign object, murder her, stuff her in a suitcase, and throw the suitcase into a pond. But that's what it seems Melissa Huckaby did to...

The April 6th appearance of Chris Brown in a Los Angeles courtroom to enter a plea provided us with a rare moment of hearing the truth--not from him, but from the mouths of the singers' fans. Brown pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of assault and making criminal threats....

Oprah went behind the scenes at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, and talked with children, teens, and parents who had been affected by last year's raid. The FLDS members shared a cozy homemade dinner with Oprah and spoke about their polygamist lifestyle and Warren Jeffs, their leader...

We think we've come a long way, baby. Not! Today's teens have shown that we're still living out patriarchal myths dating back at least five thousand years. Talk about recycling old stuff! The whole media circus surrounding the Chris Brown and Rihanna "incident" has actually done us all a favor...

Today's news about this ongoing public peek into domestic violence is that Rihanna is "torn" about helping the cops because she still loves Chris. This is the classic line of a woman who is unconsciously programmed to come up with excuses for her man. And if, in fact, it's not...

The hot young R&B stars - 20-year-old Rihanna and her 19-year-old boyfriend of the past year Chris Brown - had been scheduled to appear at the Grammys when Brown's wayward fists got in the way. Rihanna was taken to the hospital with a busted lip, swollen black eye,...

The last time we heard this much about A-Rod, he was seen coming and going with hot mama Madonna. Their alleged romance led up to his divorce, and a lousy season with the Yankees. But that's so yesterday's news. Sex has been left far afield in favor of...