I've just finished watching a must-see documentary currently playing on HBO by famed war correspondent and filmmaker Sebastian Junger (War, The Perfect Storm, Restrepo) called Which Way Is The Front Line From Here: The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.

Hetherington was a war photojournalist killed...

I never understood why anyone would fly 24-hours from California to the African bush only to potentially be eaten. After three days at the Madikwe Safari Lodge I get it.

The dichotomy of sheer luscious luxury in the midst of...

My mom and dad haven't been married since I was two years old. Throughout my childhood, they had very little contact. Once custody was settled, they passed me back and forth with a minimum of drama or friction. I was fortunate that they had a very civilized divorce,...

On March 31, 1993 a young man's trajectory to stardom was cut tragically short.

Lengendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee's charismatic son, Brandon, was carving a name of his own in film when a dummy bullet shot from a prop gun penetrated his abdomen...

I have an addiction. I'm addicted to dresses. I have 71 dresses. 71. I'm the Imelda Marcos of dresses.

I was a tomboy in elementary school and a kiss from Donny Osmond (whose puppy-love-brown eyes and magnificent white teeth made me swoon) couldn't have gotten me to wear a...

I first met Svetlana and her husband Magnus at my friend Caprice's Family Fourth of July pool party. Despite the 100-plus attendees, when the couple entered the party a hush descended.

Svetlana brushed the underbelly of six feet high. Her legs could have been scaffolding for the Burj Khalifa in...

A child, who shall remain nameless, came home tonight from her first softball practice of the season having discovered that none of her former teammates are on her team this year. And, even suckier, several of them ended up on the same team.

She was distraught. Quite distraught. I felt...

I've been planning my 30th high school reunion, searching high and low for class of 1983 graduates. This has brought up a lot of things for me: How quickly time is flying. How the social barriers that existed in high school seem to have fallen away. I've talked to the...

The year was 1989 and heavy metal, aka hair bands, were at their pinnacle. Bands with names like Abhorrence, Abruption, disEMBOWELMENT, Gorefest and Gorguts...

My friend Bethany kept falling in lust with men at her office, which would've been fine except that she was in a 17-year marriage and had two teenage daughters. She was never physically unfaithful to her husband Doug, but the cost in integrity was devastating.

Finally the inevitable...

My brother and his bride were both virgins when they married at 22 and 20-years-old. I wasn't the only member of my family who didn't support their decision to marry young and statistics say I'm right. Below are the current percentages of divorce rates by age:

Married by...

My kids are smart. They have a genetic predisposition. I was smart. Their dad was smart. We had high GPAs. We had high SATs. We graduated college with suma-cum-somethings. We were a parent's dream.

Until Henry graduated, couldn't get a job and had to borrow money from his parents. Until...

Here's what's great about middle-aged married sex:

You Don't Worry About Your Orgasms So Much. People get very competitive about their orgasms, as if they were hiking Mount Everest. Did you summit, or did you only make it to base camp? Did you need an oxygen tank, the ministrations of...

My friend Maggie (who gave me permission to write this) is a volunteer at her children's elementary school in Seattle. She's on the crunchy-granola side, makes all her kids' clothes, bakes the most delicious, homemade rustic loaves and corn breads. Her beauty is natural and understated; there's rarely a trace...

1988 was a banner year for me. I was separately invited by two male college friends to engage in a ménage à trois with them and their wives. I was never flirtatious with or attracted to these men. I didn't have a tongue bolt, a belly ring, pierced nipples or...

I've been watching Ryan Murphy's new NBC sitcom The New Normal, about a committed gay couple having a baby through a quirky, kind surrogate mother who lives with them. In the latest episode the men kiss passionately after one proposes marriage to the other. I had a very strong reaction,...

I met my friend Mistress Justine for lunch on Friday. That's not her real name, but it should be. She and her husband, Raoul (also a pseudonym) have been married 15 years and the last time we spoke Justine admitted their sex life had stagnated. They'd just gone through a...

My 10-year-old daughter Clare only likes to wear clothes from the boy's section. Preferably a boxy, shapeless t-shirt with pictures of Spiderman or any other superhero on them. She always wears two braids. Always. Even to bed. Her hair is thick, blonde and gorgeous. Clare has beautiful, wide-set blue eyes,...

I was working in my outdoor office last Thursday in the 90-degree heat when my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the phone number, but I wanted to escape my writing duties for the moment and answered. A young woman's voice asked if I was Shannon Colleary. I...

It's Friday night. Our daughters Bridget and Clare both had sleepovers elsewhere. They were gone by 5:30 p.m. and not set to return until the following morning.

Henry and I were home alone for the first time since the new millennium.

Should we go out? Here's what that looks like:...