Want to understand and share the incidents of your life in ways that make them meaningful to others? Nothing rings more real than sharing the stories that mark turning points in your life.

Our relationship stories are our lifelines with others. By sharing our stories with someone important to us, we can see the events of our life from different, surprising perspectives. Creating our mutual stories could change our view of each other in unexpected and rewarding ways.

As someone who loves to hear people's stories and share my own stories with the world, I have found some of the stories I have continually told myself have not allowed me to listen wholeheartedly to others' stories.

While myths, as vehicles for conveying wisdom, have been around since the beginning of human history, the therapeutic use of metaphor -- the subtly structured "story with a message" -- is a more recent development.

If you like stories with a twist, this one is for you.

It's very difficult to describe a disease and the overall toll it takes as in my case of stage IV breast cancer.

We are one week into this adventure, and it is time for updates! I am still running across the country to raise money and awareness for lung cancer. I am taking on this challenge in honor of a dear childhood friend, Jill Costello, who lost her battle with lung cancer at just 22.

I am trying to create a gift. A gift for my friend. He is 38. He is in love. He will marry in three weeks' time. I am 38. I am not in love. I have been separated 21 months.

In matters of the heart, finance, armed conflict and whoever's currently in the seats of power, I vacillate, suffer, howl and sink. On the yoga mat, however, I take what comes, even when nothing comes, even when what comes is pretty laughable... or damned unbearable.

Those of us who use our own life experiences as material are certainly no strangers to judgment. And that alone gives us the right to fly our fearless flags high.

Like Mary Richardson Kennedy appears to have been, Delia was a beloved person who died too young from terminal depression. It can happen to anyone. Even those who seem to have it all.

My mother loved her chocolates. A box of Russell Stover was her favorite, though she'd never turn down a Whitman's Sampler. Anything better was just too good to be eaten and only meant to be admired and sniffed, like the cap from her Chanel No. 5.

There was never a moment when I said to myself, "Self, it's been two months since you haven't been your cheery self, and if the Zoloft ad on TV is any indication of what depression feels like, you are certainly a sad egg who can't -- or doesn't want to -- catch that damn butterfly."

With Passover, and the one-year anniversary of my mother's death, approaching fast, I find myself in a particularly strange situation, wondering if I have a choice in how to move forward.