Lee Woodruff

Just this morning, I did the thing experienced mothers aren't supposed to do. I lost it on my daughter. She's 11 and I'm 52. That makes me the adult. In fact, last year I was the oldest living mother in elementary school. I should be a total ball of zen-nicity....

My own mother's words loomed large before I got pregnant: "Do the things you want to do before you get married and have babies." And it was great advice. By the time I gave birth to our first child, I had climbed the ladder in the marketing world, traveled and...

Recipes are the currency by which generations of women define and distinguish themselves from other families. These sometimes-secret formulas, handed down from mother to daughter, are inscriptions of endearment, the personal stamp encrypted in each dish like DNA. For my husband's family, it's the rutabaga recipe at Thanksgiving and the...

I did it. Ta-daa! My first novel, "Those We Love Most" will be out September 11, 2012. It's my wedding anniversary, among other important milestones.

And as I put the edited manuscript in a big padded envelope and filled out the UPS label (too scary to trust to regular...

When our dog Tucker died, hit by a car in front of my eyes, I was struck in the days that followed by the way grief, relief and guilt could co-exist in such a cozy fashion. I cried my eyes out as I carried his broken body back to the...

Help me. I'm drowning. Drowning in emails. Each day a new tsunami of sometimes meaningful, mostly useless, trivial, occasionally important and often spammy correspondence washes ashore on my laptop like ocean detritus, and it's my job to pick through it. My friends are even hawking Viagra, although some claim their...

The Santas, the wreaths, the Bing Crosby songs, the season of goodness and giving naturally causes one to wonder... What are the Kardashians doing for Christmas? As the holidays barrel forward, that pesky family is like a polyp-filled colon, popping up on magazine covers, on the morning shows and entertainment...

I can still feel his creepy little sausage fingers on my thigh. Babysitting his kids wasn't my favorite job, but my parents expected all of us to earn spending money. The father always volunteered to drive me home and I dreaded the discomfort of the short ride, the forced conversation,...

Gabby Gifford's amazing story and the release of her book and home video have put rehabilitation medicine and its heroic professionals--the doctors, nurses and therapists -- temporarily in the public eye. But I have no doubt it will soon fall back in the shadows of public consciousness.

Medical rehabilitation isn't...

Thanksgiving always seems to sneak up on us, sandwiched in between Halloween and Christmas it sometimes gets short shrift. But there was a time when I was a kid that holiday songs weren't background music for trick or treating. Thanksgiving was a stand-alone holiday, a truly secular day to reflect...

On April 19, 2005, Debbie Schulz of Friendswood, Texas, got the call every parent of a service member in Iraq and Afghanistan dreads. Her child had been wounded. When she hung up the phone, in shock, all she knew was that her son was considered to be "VSI", an acronym...

Anyone who came of age in the '70s has dealt with the painful reckoning of their yearbook photo, or really ANY photograph from that time. Hands down, it was the most hideous fashion decade of the last millennium, with the possible exception of being a man in the Court of...

Like a good doobie, when I turned 50, I made an appointment for my colonoscopy. A cancer you can totally prevent? I'm in. Let's set aside for the moment that the general area of the colon is NOT my favorite body part. And the idea of someone excavating down there...

By the time a woman reaches the age of 50 in America, she has heard just about every loveable, awful, demeaning, eye-rolling, cute and hysterical term for those two globs of fat that sit on her chest.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so it's a good time to...

I knew exactly what it was the minute the couch swayed in late August. An earthquake in upstate New York. I'd been through "the big one" in San Francisco in 1989. So when I felt the gentle rocking, and then the stillness, my thoughts flicked to the fragility of our...

There is a new breed of tube-topped-tongue-pierced stalker hanging around the locker room after the game and backstage after the concert. She's lurking when the campaigners have filed out and the bar is quieter. Except the thing is, she doesn't have to physically be there batting her eyes and thrusting...

I've written before about the importance of caregivers -- the unsung heroes in our midst. No one asks to become a caregiver. When you're thrust into that role unexpectedly, it can be truly devastating, particularly when your loved one is experiencing chronic pain, a condition that affects a whopping

Over the past few years, I've traveled to university towns in the nation's heartland numerous times. Although I'm an easterner by birth, I feel at ease in the plain states. But it wasn't until I recently spoke at the University of Minnesota, home of the Golden Gophers, that an observation...

Many parents are taken by surprise by how "plain old sad" they feel in the aftermath of a child's departure. When the first kid goes off to college, your own parents ( the college kid's grandparents) are most likely more fragile or have died. That may add an intensity to...

OK--the big day has arrived (or almost). Know that you have done your job. Your goal is for them to be happy, safe, well-adjusted and content. As you pull away from campus after hugs and good byes, it's going to be up to that son or daughter to...