You are trying to decide whether to disclose an important truth, but reconsider when a friend urges caution and suggests that you not take the unnecessary risk. So you reconsider. You decide to postpone the decision, even as you yearn for the release that authenticity would bring. You are stalled by ambivalence. We grow up … Continue reading Truth Telling
Invisibility
When I closed my office door and began to dream of writing a book, friends asked, “Why”? Striving to be truthful, I answered, “To avoid becoming invisible.” They objected, especially those who are younger, not wanting me to feel diminished by growing old. They tried to talk me out of having this concern. But they … Continue reading Invisibility
Why Marry?
For the first time in more than one hundred years, the number of young adults (age twenty-five to thirty-four) who have never married has surpassed those who are. Of course, many of the unmarrieds are living with a partner without ceremony or license. The past taboo against that, at least for them, is ancient history. … Continue reading Why Marry?
The Third Person in the Room
Dear Reader, If you have already received and read an email from Nolan Kerr Press, my publisher, publicist (and good friend, Nancy Nolan) about my upcoming book The Third Person in the Room: Stories of Relationships at a Turning Point, please move on to some other worthy emails in your feed. I have succumbed to … Continue reading The Third Person in the Room
To Be A Man
Last month as Father’s Day approached, a story I heard on the radio came back to mind. The question had been posed: “What does it mean to be manly today?” A listener in California called the station to address it. The caller was a Mexican American who had come to this country at the age … Continue reading To Be A Man
The Introvert’s Dilemma
Picture this David Sipress cartoon: two couples meet on a street corner. One of the men has placed his hands over his eyes. His female companion says: "It’s too late, Roger . . . they’ve seen us." This image has me chuckling each time I think about it. It brings to mind how I felt … Continue reading The Introvert’s Dilemma
No Need To Explain
“How can I explain this to my folks?” my young friend asked. Two months earlier her husband has disclosed his infidelity, and she had found shelter and solace with her parents. Now after that separation, she'd decided to return to her own home. Since leaving, she and her husband had gained important insights in counseling … Continue reading No Need To Explain
Does Love Trump Privacy?
When our youngest child grew up and moved away, I claimed her bedroom and fashioned a space all my own. It was quite small, on the second story of our home with leafy tree branches almost touching the windows, a nest of sorts. Sometimes my husband came and stood at the threshold to ask me … Continue reading Does Love Trump Privacy?
Men Friends
This week I enjoyed a reunion of sorts. I had dinner with two former colleagues, two lawyers both named Bill. Over many years we spoke often and had developed a level of both trust and admiration for the quality of representation we offered to our clients, but I had not previously known of their close … Continue reading Men Friends
The Shame of Illness
I have few memories of illness in my family as I was growing up. My parents barely acknowledged minor ailments. They spoke of sickness as something that, with proper living, could be avoided. They often deemed the illness of others psychosomatic, not without sympathy, but with an underlying message of some hidden weakness that should … Continue reading The Shame of Illness
