I broke up with my therapist recently. That sounds a bit dramatic. What I mean is that I ended a formal relationship with a talk therapist I’d been seeing fairly regularly over the past few years. And, like all break-ups – I felt incredibly sad afterwards…

The mirror does not lie. But it does not tell the whole truth. At 60 or 70, the mirror can become an interrogation. Who is this? I asked myself this question and I know many women do too. Since I don’t use social media much, I’m not in the habit of making comparisons… but self-criticism, I’m very, very good at that!

This past Labor Day weekend, I stood in Minnesota surrounded by my sister, my husband, all four of my daughters, my two granddaughters, three cousins, and two uncles. Together, we shared stories, laughed, cried, and sprinkled my parents’ ashes in the state they once called home…

My father was a big man in just about every sense of the word. He was a big, redheaded Irishman who weighed well over 200 pounds and had played professional football for the Pittsburgh Steelers back in the leather-helmet days. Then he had me. I topped out at about five-foo-nine…

Everyone is motivated by different things. I tend to be a low-achiever/perfectionist with a tendency to second guess myself into a tailspin before taking on a new project. Surprisingly, though, this has not stopped me from writing best-selling nonfiction books, starting and running a 24-hour Catholic AM radio station, and leaving different “fairly successful” occupations when the situation no longer fit…

In our 60s, attending to our needs and improving our relationships is more important than ever before. Time is of the essence, but making the most of our time takes practice. One way to enrich our lives is by applying boundaries to accommodate…

I know, it’s not easy starting over later in life, especially if it wasn’t what you had planned, or you have had an unexpected setback. It may even feel like the end of the world. I get it. After my marriage of more than 30 years collapsed…

Why do we suddenly have the blues when yesterday we felt wonderful about life? How could we write three chapters in our novel in two days, and the next week just stare at a blank page? Why do we suddenly have no interest in going out with our best friends, when last weekend we had the greatest time ever with them?

As I age, I feel my brain slowing down. I don’t always have my snappy comebacks anymore. I know exactly what I want to say, but the word won’t be delivered to my brain. Especially those nouns! Oh, the nouns. And don’t get me started on proper nouns! Toward the end of my teaching career, my students started supplying me with the word they thought was going to be next in my sentence. Sometimes they were right…

I recently returned from a visit to Southern Africa. The experience was beyond all expectations. Because the game reserve was private, they have strict rules about the number of vehicles that could be near an animal. The animals are never fed. They have become habituated to vehicles. It helps that they have been safe from hunting and poaching for several generations…