Articles

By Ruthie Ackerman I sat with my back against the bed, my laptop opened on my thighs. I’d been hunched over in one place for so long that the heat from the bottom of my computer had penetrated through my thigh fat, down to the muscle until my leg radiated with numbness. But I didn’t…

By Carita Rizzo I write this on a day where, once again, I don’t feel quite like myself. Like I’m hungover, but I haven’t had anything to drink. Jittery, but without the caffeine hit. I know exactly what it is. I’m in a low-estrogen phase of my cycle and there is a migraine headed my…

By Wendi Aarons What nobody tells you about your nest emptying is how long it takes for the nest to actually empty. Birds just shove their little fledglings out of their branch-and-stick beds whenever they think the time has come for them to fly, hoping their wings work. Humans, not so much. I spent months…

By Emmy Favilla “This is one of the puppies who ate their owner.” I sent this to the group chat of my closest friends, along with a photo of an impossibly cute bat-eared mutt with what looks like a perpetual frown on his face, a la Grumpy Cat. He is small and light brown and…

By Heidi F. Stepzinski, as told to Denise K. James  Some names have been changed.  In early 2004, when I was 24 and living with a nightmare of a roommate, I picked up a copy of Apartment Finder (the print version of what is now apartmentfinder.com) and flipped through the pages just to see what…

By Alisha Fernandez Miranda It was 2011. I was living in London. Obama was President. The dance floor was alive with Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” It was entirely acceptable, even encouraged, to wear skinny jeans. And it was also the year I froze my embryos.  Even though I was one of the lucky few that…

By Julie Alvin I was at a cocktail party recently when, a few drinks in, someone (ok, it was me) bluntly asked the gathering of fellow moms in their late 30s and early 40s, “So… what’s everyone doing for birth control now?” Lately, the topic seemed unavoidable. In my social media feeds, pundits were discussing…

By Sarah Michelle Sherman I knew my divorce would change just about everything in my life, but I didn’t expect the fallout to cut so deep. It felt like a second heartbreak.  I was 37 when I left last June — a mother, a writer, living in Albany, New York. It’s the kind of place…

By Lana Schwartz In the vast and varied world of romance, with its sea of fun, fizzy tropes (second-chance romance, fake relationship, enemies to lovers, and so on), the romance writer has become a trope in and of its — or should I say her — self. The harried, often mousy, and even more often…

By Heide Brandes When Alannah, 54, laughed too hard at a friend's dinner party, she quietly excused herself to the restroom. Again. For millions of women like her, urinary incontinence isn't just an inconvenience, it's a daily reality that affects everything from exercise routines to social lives. However, the "inevitable" leakage that touches up to…

By Brooke Berman Remember the iconic scene in the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil where Katherine Helmond has her face stretched out? That’s what I used to think of when I heard the phrase “getting work done.” Clearly, I thought, nobody I know would ever do that.  And yet here we are, decades later, and the…

By Kimberly Harrington Alimony never crossed my mind while I was married. It didn’t cross my mind when my then-husband and I separated. It didn’t even cross my mind when I was writing a whole-ass book about all of those things, including our impending divorce. I thought alimony was men’s business. And since I knew…