I've always had a hard time holding back tears. I get weepy in animated films like "Tarzan." I constantly have to dry my eyes at friends' going away parties, and yes, I've cried at work. It's never intentional, but sometimes you just can't help it. According to conventional wisdom, this...

If rules were made to be broken, why are so many of us so afraid of breaking them?

They have their function, after all: If everyone took a red light as but a minor suggestion, driving -- or merely riding in -- a car would be a seriously risky endeavor....

May 13-19 was National Women's Health Week, an event spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health. Ironically, although women use the health care system the most, they are casualties of the "affordability barrier" to the requisite tests, treatments and...

Being a female entrepreneur is certainly challenging. While the number of women entrepreneurs and leaders has increased steadily over the years, they still face significant challenges in a male-dominated workplace.

I spoke with representatives of several inspiring women-led businesses in Asia about the various barriers they had to overcome...

I think I thought that getting married would have necessarily turned me into an adult if I weren't one before walking down the aisle. Maybe it's actually immature to think that dressing up like a virginal princess in an effort to demand all eyes on me for a day would...

It seems that no one is immune to E L James' controversial novel, 50 Shades of Grey. Television shows, magazines, popular blogs, even side conversations outside the school pick-up line are filled with talk about how hot it is -- and how it may be solely responsible for...

I chose to move to Portland when I was twenty because that's where my favorite band, Sleater-Kinney lived. That tells you everything you need to know about my maturity and decision-making faculties at the time.

I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with my life, perhaps become a...

"The thing about being murdered," writes William Langewiesche in this May's issue of Vanity Fair, "it usually comes as a surprise."

The same can be said of date rape. When I awoke that bright spring morning of March 21st, 1986 in a pensione in Venice, Italy, I didn't expect the...

The World's Worst (a.k.a., Our Favorite) Ways to End It

1. Formal Invitation.

I have this friend.

You know the type: effervescent and bright, like California Sauvignon Blanc. La Princesse Charmante.

For the past 10 years, she has also been the centripetal force that pulls me into strange, enterprising, "what-the-hell-are-we-doing" situations, the stretcher and sifter for that elusive thing called character....

This week's "Bachelorette" included a surprise visit from Dolly Parton, some excellent reminders that we're still in Charlotte, North Carolina, and proved once and for all that reality television involving children is a lot less fun to guilty-pleasure watch. All that being said, episode three proved to be the least...

I am not a member of the Mile High Club, but I once made a crash-landing because I was making out with the man who was supposed to be manning the controls -- not man-handling the passenger. We left the bent and battered plane in a field, walked to the...

Baseball season is well underway and, once again, it's the time of year that my husband accepts that almost nothing comes between his wife and her "Damn Yankees."

Don't get me wrong. My marriage to John has been going strong for over 25 years...

I feel the heat first. It rouses me from disorienting, sticky dreams. The walls of my hotel room are an earthy reddish brown, like the interior of a tandoori oven -- steamy, close, and designed to intensify and tenderize its contents. I'm slow-roasting. My thoughts are slow and muddy --...