Develop a writing plan. The first time I published anything, it was a short story in a literary journal. This was back in the 1990s when they had journals primarily in print. …

Deciding to stop trying is a hard choice. — One of the biggest challenges in life is knowing when to let go and when to keep trying, no matter how impossible the challenges appear to be. After thirteen years of infertility, after the death of my first daughter from SIDS, I was pretty much ready to be done with…

Parenting keeps me mentally stable. — If you told me 30 years ago that parenting would help keep me mentally stable, I would not have understood. To me, caring for anyone else would be impossible when I couldn’t even care for myself. I remember laying in bed, miserable, unable to get up for my college classes…

Our healthcare system has major problems with end-of-life care. — The lack of recognition and emphasis on extending life at all costs reflects a broken system. “It’s time to put him in hospice,” said the geriatric case manager we had hired, after months of long-term care debacles and trying to navigate the Medicare/Medicaid system by ourselves. She recognized the dying…

Grief in Zero and Ones. — I found out the hard way that technology can immortalize trauma. Texts, voicemails, or photos can all be haunting fragments from the past, capturing fleeting moments we might otherwise have lost. “Daddy had a stroke. Call me.” I saw these fragile moments in the texts back and forth with my…

Short answer: yes it is. — In our increasingly digitized world, concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) “reading people’s” minds have emerged. Social media users have reported experiences where their thoughts seemingly manifest in personalized advertisements on their smartphones, leading to questions about the extent of AI’s understanding of our innermost thoughts. Let’s delve into the concept…

Or should I just self-publish on Medium? — I’ve been taking writing classes through the Stanford Continuing Education program. This time it’s a memoir class that culminates in one chapter and the beginnings of a longer manuscript. I submitted an excerpt of this chapter-in-process to various journals and have been rejected or haven’t heard back. …

No Mimosa for me. — “What do you want to do for Mother’s Day?” is one of the most loaded questions you can ask. On the one hand, you want the one day you get the attention you deserve. On the other hand, you want to be left alone like you deserve, too. There seemed…

His children claim this is part of a pattern of negative behaviors towards them. — Gwendlyn Brown, the daughter of Sister Wives’ Kody Brown and Christine Brown, alleges that her father physically abused her. She specifically accuses him of spanking so severely as to leave bruising. Gwendlyn has been recently outspoken about her negative experiences with the various cast members on the show. …