The night of my 30th birthday, I fell asleep in my mother's childhood bedroom. The next morning, my grandparents served me Entenmann's crumb cake. It was the first birthday I celebrated without a date in 10 years. I felt whole and at peace.

Throughout my 20s, I bounced back and forth between feeling like Mommy and Daddy's Not-So-Little Girl and an adult who was out there in the world on her own. I wondered if that in-between feeling would ever go away. It did.

I have known people who make "Before I Turn 30" to-do lists. From what I can gather, some people feel that they have not accomplished what they thought they would by the time they got to their 30s. Fair enough, but is a to-do list really necessary? I decided to find out.

Have you checked these off your list?

I think of fear as an imaginary friend, but the kind you don't dismiss along with childhood's other phantoms.

This past year, I have had numerous reporters ask me to explain what women go through in their mid-life crisis and why women around the age of 29 are ...

Turning 30 is a milestone in any woman's life, and it can be a source of considerable anxiety. The impending transition from your (supposedly) youthfu...

My 30s thus far feel like an awakening. I'm sloughing off the unessential in life, love and work, and discovering the joy of saying "no" rather than caving into a people-pleasing "yes." In short, I'm gaining an honest confidence.

She's 87. Of course 31 seems young to her...she'd put in a whole 56 years between now and her 31st birthday. But didn't she know my super-cool life -- the life I'd always aspired to -- was over?

Getting to know yourself physically and emotionally makes for better sex. Learning what love is makes for better sex. Caring about others makes for better sex.

The shameful truth was that I thought anorexia made me interesting. The clothes I'd kept in my closet reveal that until very recently, I still did. Getting rid of them says the unthinkable: I'm well. Nothing to see here.

I know I should be in a full-blown panic about the end of my 20's, but I actually feel pretty great about it. I'm excited to jump into a new decade. I'm excited to see what adventures my 30's are going to throw at me.

I was waiting in my party dress, expecting someone or something outside myself to declare me real, started, begun, on my way. But not yet. When I was ready. Which would apparently be never.

I started lying about my age when I was 7. It was first grade, and I had turned 7 in August. Having an August birthday meant that I would either be th...

As I approach my thirtieth birthday in the coming weeks, I have chosen to review my life in detail, and to dissect each layer of my being to discover what I am comprised of.

For as long as girls have floated on their daddies' shoes, the elusive Happily Ever After has been a perennial must-have. When should, or can, we learn that bliss is only tangentially connected to some swept-off-your-feet love?