The road to failure exists even before the possible journey into illness begins. This is because research shows that some women overestimate their risk of getting breast cancer, even after they've been told by doctors that statistics make them less at risk than they think. While it isn't clear what...

I. Failing to Understand That Cancer is a Failure (Bio-Cellular), Wrapped in a Mystery (What Did You Do to Get It?), Rolled Up in an Enigma (How Do You Survive It?)

Cancer is the only disease, besides AIDS (and morbid obesity), where everything is your fault...

I received an email yesterday morning from a good friend who informed me that Marcel Marceau, the famous mime, had died. I was shocked and saddened by his passing, because even though I never met Marcel Marceau, or saw him perform in person, I felt a deep connection to him...

One of my favorite things to do in life is to isolate a personal failure, obsess about it, publicly confess to it, embrace it, and then find some sort of scientific evidence to prove that it wasn't actually my fault after all. If I'm feeling particularly insecure, I'll even...

I started off as a novelist.

(OK. That's not entirely true. I started off as a publicist. And before that, a waitress at IHOP. And before that --well, I'm going to save this "resume of failure" for later so please be patient.)

As a novelist, I often "fictionalized" events in...

Every great love story starts with a secret, so here's mine:

I love Failure.

I know this sounds strange, even ridiculous -- most people don't even admit to knowing Failure or bumping into Failure by accident, let alone professing love for Failure! -- but I really always...

Laura can't believe the timing. She's been waiting for an excuse to commemorate the 10th anniversary of being on anti-depressants and now she has one: May just happens to be one of those made-up 'specially designated' months called "National Mental Health Month." Despite the fact that Laura has always hated...