For Valentine’s Day I was going to post “A Recipe for Married Life” by Anthony Coniaris that a reader recently sent me. Its wise bits include: An exhaustive study of police records showed that no woman ever shot her husband while he was doing the dishes. Learn to serve each other in humility and love....

I was in fifth grade when I learned the power of heavenly signs. My parents had just separated and my mother was despondent. She was praying a novena to St. Therese the Little Flower, whom I am named after. Tradition holds that on the fifth day of the novena, the person praying will receive a...

According to Cigna’s U.S. Loneliness Index, nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feel alone.  A quarter of Americans rarely or never feel as though there are people that understand them, and a fifth report they rarely or never feel close to people. The report says that finding a balance of work, exercise, sleep,...

In the fourth grade, my grandmother sewed Halloween costumes for me and my twin sister. I went as a nun and she as a jailbreaker. The costumes were appropriate then and for the next three decades. I followed every rule and she broke them. At age two, when she was still in diapers, she packed...

George Burns once said: “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family… in another city.” That would explain why the holidays are so stressful. Those dear relatives who live in San Francisco suddenly are lingering in front of your refrigerator in Cincinnati and you have to figure out a socially acceptable way of setting...