Learn the secret to how southern women make anything sound sweet, and why this Jersey gal still leans on that lesson while living abroad.

Like more than 23 million other American households, Nader and I added a puppy to our family during the pandemic. It had been more than seven years since a pet took center stage in our lives—and precisely 2,555 of those days were spent putting that loss behind us. I never thought we’d have another dog.…

I’ve had this gnawing feeling in my stomach for a while—one that, like most women, I’ve ignored until it demanded attention. I turned to Google, a modern-day Oracle, Farmer’s Almanac, telehealth provider, and Magic 8 Ball, to find a cure for my woes. “Google, what does it mean to have a gnawing pain?” I ask.…

During a period of my youth when I had outgrown my Barbie dolls but before I was old enough to date, I would spend hours writing my signature over and over again. This act wasn’t a random or obsessive-compulsive exercise in penmanship. I practiced signing my name with purpose. I knew I would someday become…

I am a New Jersey-born gal who moved with her family to the rural, southeastern United States at the ripe old age of nine. Even though I still lived in the contiguous 48 states, life in 1970s Franklin County, Virginia,  the “Moonshine Capital of the World”, felt like an international relocation because of the many…

It happened again the other day. I caught sight of someone who looked so familiar it caused me to ask, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” No, it wasn’t anyone I knew. The stranger only looked like someone I once met. The resemblance was uncanny. It caused me to question whether Dolly the Sheep…