Last night CNN reported breaking news on the new government task force guidelines for mammography screening. Just so you know, I am not going to write about the details of how the conclusion was drawn, leaving that to others to analyze. What I am about to say is purely anecdotal.

Before my first child was a year old, I came down with a blinding headache that knocked the wind out of me. The doctor diagnosed a sinus infection after one glance up my nose with those little reverse tweezer spreaders. He gave me the prescription, the thing you go there...

Chris Brown's choices following the violent incident that took place in a car in February on the night of the Grammy Awards did not surprise me, and neither did Diane Sawyer in her recent 20/20 interview of Brown's girlfriend, the victim of his attack. They both pretty much did what...

PC can sometimes stand for perfectly crazy. I'm just sayin' ... what seems to qualify as Politically Correct these days can leave you scratching your head or screaming like a lunatic.

Take for example the brouhaha about our basketball-crazy President who loves to gather his boys (don't even go...

A father of three young girls dropped off a memory stick to the local Walmart to have over 100 family photos printed. Walmart staff felt that some of the nude images were inappropriate, beyond normal innocent childhood bath photos, and per their store policy should be referred to the police...

Come on, admit it. You are feeling guilty pleasure from reading a certain "news item" while there is at least a small voice in your head questioning why you are reading it at all, why you clicked on a story that, thank God, no one saw you click on. But...

It started just like every Sunday morning, watching Meet the Press. I picked it up when David Gregory was getting into the Shriver Report, A Woman's Nation, with Valerie Jarrett (Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls) along with Maria Shriver and John Podesta of the Center...

Dear Mrs. Obama,

I know you have a large staff to handle the enormous demands of being the First Lady of the United States and that each public issue to which you devote your time is carefully vetted. Please consider a cause, not nearly as shiny as nutrition or...

A small article appeared on the bottom of a right-hand inside page of USA Today this week with the headline "VA May Ease Rules for Vietnam Vets." The story, acknowledged as first reported by the New York Times, was short and required further research to understand. What it boils down...

Tyler Perry's movies are a complex mix of humor, faith, social commentary and family. I wouldn't call myself a fan, maybe more a curious observer. A fascinating personality with a voracious appetite for work, he's just down right appealing. The production values can be sloppy, the directing is almost always...

Senator Al Franken got my attention and the attention of a lot of other people who care about sexual abuse and violence, with the passing of his Senate Amendment 2566. The Amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill provides for the withholding of federal funds from contractors who continue to apply...

October never fails to catch me by surprise with its emotional flood that ranges from unspeakable joy and gratitude to guilty irritation. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a good thing, don't get me wrong. But being both a high risk breast cancer survivor and a sexual abuse survivor is tricky...

She still carries herself with that trademark Miss America posture that ironically helped her win the crown as America's ideal young woman in 1958. What America didn't know was that the ramrod straight carriage was a result of an omnipresent self-protective tension throughout her body, a response to her...

Today my plan was to submit a post, already written, that is positive and hopeful, about one of the few true heroes in the fight against sexual abuse. But then I got sidetracked. It started late last night when I was set to do a national radio interview. It had...

It seems like everyone I know, and even some I don't, assumed I would blog about Mackenzie Phillips. I, too, have a new memoir, Silver Platter Girl, which focuses on paternal sexual abuse. But my story is nothing like Mackenzie's, probably very few are. I mean how many children are...

It's just my luck that Father of the Bride has become one of those movies that is shown over and over on cable, maybe not quite as often as Pretty Woman, but right up there. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie for all its sweetness and emotional cleanliness....

Lately I can't stop thinking about Marvin Gaye. It's just one of those things, the little voice in your head that finally fades away or, in this case, just gets louder until you do something about it. I was just starting to think about what to do about it while...

The excitement at last night's rain delayed US Open Women's Semifinal match between Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters provided tennis fans a rare glimpse into the dynamics of abuse. My family says I can find the abuse angle in just about anything, and admittedly I seem to have a good...

It was 112 degrees on a July afternoon when Phoenix police say that four boys, ages 9-14, lured an 8 year old girl into a storage room in the apartment complex where they all lived by promising her gum. There she was brutally attacked and sexually violated. All of the...

It is a port wine stain, the mark that covers my right hand, arm, part of my chest and back. The trouble begins right away when they name your most prominent physical characteristic after a stain, the one commonly known as the most difficult to get out. It wasn't until...