I used to sing “Be Not Afraid,” in the shower as an anxious child. It was the one song that gave me great comfort, and every time I hear it, at Sunday Mass or at a funeral, I tear up. It never occurred to me that the last line of this song, “Come follow me,...

Awhile back my friend Michelle said to the congregation at her husband’s funeral service: “He never spoke an unkind word to me.”   Another girlfriend and I looked at each other, jaws dropped. And then she whispered, “They didn’t have kids.” We nodded and felt better about ourselves. But a growing body of research confirms...

I had been on the drug Zyprexa (olanzapine) for four weeks and had already gained 15 pounds which, you know, didn’t help my depression. After going to a wedding and catching a side view of myself, I called my doctor and told him that my name was now Violet Beauregarde, the gum chewer in “Charlie and...

In his book The Art of Uncertainty, Dennis Merritt Jones writes: “Between a shaky world economy, increasing unemployment, and related issues, many today are being forced to come to the edge of uncertainty. Just like the baby sparrows, they find themselves leaning into the mystery that change brings, because they have no choice: It’s fly or...

I think we’ve all been dissed by a friend at least once in our lifetime, right? Recently I’ve had two people remove me as a friend on Facebook. Like that feels good. Was it my annoying status updates? The singing video that I uploaded (“A Few of My Favorite Things” … check it out )?...