I was taking a walk down a country road near my home when I saw a bright yellow "Children at Play" sign. Carefully written above the letters in deep black marker was the word "Autistic."

When I was growing up, I remember a family of deaf children who lived...

I arrived at the BlogHer conference in Chicago unsure of exactly what I would find. Would it be like a Star Trek convention where everyone else was an insider about Spock's difficult childhood or Captain Kirk's passion for Irish dance music? Would I be the person who didn't speak the...

Memorial Day is on the horizon and for most of us, it¹s a blessed three-day
weekend where we can sleep in, char something on the BBQ and relax with our
friends.

But for the one in four people in this country who are caregivers, people
parenting...

As I left my parent's independent living facility the other day I felt deflated, sad and overwhelmed. Dementia was incrementally hollowing my father out from the inside. Tall, slim and in overall good physical health, the disease was methodically robbing him of his words and memories, his life. My mother,...

When I heard the news about Natasha Richardson I was instantly transported back three years ago to the ICU at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Suddenly plunged into the foreign the world of brain injury, I watched helplessly as my husband lay in a coma, tubes snaking around his body...

This past Sunday, Sally Quinn wrote a thought provoking Washington Post column about Elizabeth Edwards that got many of my friends talking. She took a slightly different tack than much of the other media coverage has taken. In the outcry about John Edward's revelations, she pointed one of her...

Its not headline news that flying today stinks. Being in the air, I don't care if its first class, business or economy, is now a half step up from traveling in the back of a Greyhound bus. Only Greyhound buses are more punctual. I've got nothing against Greyhound. They got...

I have seen the future and it is not green. It is brown. Brown as in parched. I recently returned from a beautiful lakeside resort in Atlanta, located around what looked like a gorgeous golf course. I'm not a golfer, but I didn't have to be one to marvel at...

I was gabbing on the phone to my friend Amy and we were discussing the upcoming Martin Luther King weekend.

"Wanna go grab dinner and a movie with our kids this weekend?"

"I wish I could," she answered. "We have the school musical revue on Friday and Saturday...

So there it is. The dreaded emotion card. What will we do with a woman in the white house if she becomes -- gasp -- emotional. The reaction to Hillary's moment of "welling up" is offensive to me; only one step above concerns over how a White House would function...

I played the Santa Card yesterday. And the Easter Bunny too. I'm not proud, so I've decided to come clean. If you've ever played the Santa Card you know just what I mean. But I'm here to let us all off the hook.

Here's how it went down...we were...

How have I done it? How have I lived without Sky Mall in my life? You know, the magazine in the seat pocket in front of you when you get on an airplane?

My friend Sherrie and I were flying back from a vacation with our kids. Unable to...

In our family, the game of dodgeball has become a kind of moral and ethical template by which we judge people's character.

It all started with my nephew Collin at a family dinner. We were grilling him about a kid his age, someone we vaguely knew. "He's an OK...

This past June 15th, in Los Angeles, a very important man in my life died at age 82. I silently mourned the passing of John Tracy. Although I had never met him, his life and the dedication of his mother, had a vast influence on me and a huge impact...

I'm guilty. You bet I am. I buy those celebrity magazines at airports or on the train. I grab an arresting cover in line at the grocery store. I tell myself this is research.

How else would I know all about Lindsey's flirtation with lesbianism, or Kate...

I had to scratch my head when I read the latest crime by a grown man who was busted having installed a video camera in a public ladies room.

Huh? I say. Why? What possible view of a woman, hunkered down over a public toilet could ever scream "sexy beast?"...

An ambulance blazed by the house. In our small summer community, the word spread fast. Some teens had been horsing around across the lake, throwing rocks in the water. One boy had been accidentally hit and his skull crushed on the left side of his head. He had been airlifted...

When I saw an arresting magazine ad for a vaccine that could help prevent cervical cancer in my young daughter, I was intrigued. I ripped it out and stuck it in the page of my daytimer to call our pediatrician.

I had known several people who'd been devastated by...

It's old news now, Elizabeth Edwards' brave fight against a recurrence of cancer; the couple's decision to continue with the campaign, despite her diagnosis. And when the headlines blared across America, I was mildly surprised by the debate. Should he or shouldn't he run? Was it wrong for them to...

I've been thinking a lot about people's definitions of family. There seem to be so many more options today about how families are configured. Nicole Ritchie's pregnancy bump, stalked and photographed like the dodo bird, caught my eye in the airport on the cover of a celebrity weekly magazine. Nicole,...