by Peg O'Neill, M.D.
April is Autism Awareness Month. For years, the Autism Society has been setting aside this month to increase public education and awareness regarding issues surrounding autism, including the importance of early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, in order to better understand this puzzling, increasingly prevalent condition which presents as a spectrum of social, communication and behavioral differences. […]
by Dawn Aarons, BA, D.A.C.
Menopause is called a “Second Spring” in Chinese Medicine. This is distinct from the “summer heat wave” or “winter storm” that some women describe.
A woman has entered menopause when one year has passed from her last menstrual period. The transitional phase leading up to that time is called perimenopause, and it can last for many years beginning anywhere from a woman’s late 30’s to her 50’s. […]
by Rosemary Lichtman, Ph.D., and Phyllis Goldberg, Ph.D
In the wake of floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, we’re struck by the realization that changes in Mother Earth present in many ways. At times, they’re gradual, other times sudden and violent. They can come from the forces of nature or the actions of human beings. They can be unexpected and out of our control or planned and anticipated. In either case, the havoc they wreak can effect millions. The effects of the natural disasters this year alone have impacted the world economy and may continue to do so for months to come. […]
by Drew Nesbitt, TCMP
In a study published in the journal of Fertility and Sterility in 2002, it was discovered that acupuncture, when performed before and after an IVF transfer, increased the rates of conception. Since that time, more and more studies have been done on the subject with encouraging results. Although the initial results in this 2002 study have been over-exaggerated by the media, subsequent studies have still maintained that acupuncture is indeed helpful. […]
by Valerie Gillies
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” Robert Breault
Full of intentions, I bought a small blank book about a month ago. It travels everywhere with me, because at any moment, I need to be able to open it up and add another entry. And I have had so many brilliant, inspired entries, you would be proud of my work. Well, maybe not, because none of them have actually been written down in the book. They swim in my mind, appearing randomly when they feel the moment is right. […]
by Jane Samuel
(In Honor of National Child Abuse Prevention Month)
– Every 35 seconds a child is abused or neglected in the US.
– Every hour a child is displaced due to abuse or neglect in the US.
– An estimated 1,740 children nationally died from abuse or neglect in one year’s time; the majority was 0-4 years old. […]
by Peg O'Neill, M.D.
We forgot about “Gotcha Day.” In the world of adoptive families, this is a significant faux-pas. “Gotcha Day” is the celebration of bringing a non-biologic child into the family. For us, it commemorates the day our family became whole; the day that my husband and I were given the gift of our precious child and entered the challenging world of raising multiple boys, with all the craziness, motion, joy and exhaustion. For my older son, it was the day he became a sibling and began his journey as a big brother. For my adoptive son, though he was just six months old when he joined our family forever, it is akin to a birthday – a momentous event, a beginning, a symbol of who he is, at least in part. Over the past six years, we have commemorated “Gotcha Day” with story-telling about how we prayed for him to become part of our family, how we came to know him, and the details of how he joined our family, including how good he was on the plane coming back from Guatemala. We look at pictures, ooh and aah over how cute and funny he was. We go out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, a mediocre pasta joint near our house. […]
Andrea Lynn
This weekend, my family is throwing a surprise birthday party for my grandmother. A surprise 90th birthday party. Setting aside the question of whether one should surprise a 90 year old with anything, least of all a room full of people yelling “surprise”, the party has got me thinking. A lot. The first question is whether I should drive 250 miles, each way, with my small children in the backseat, and then drive back the next day, so that we can attend the party. It’s a long way to drive, at an inopportune time of the year, and we’ve all been sick for the last few weeks. We’ve been feeling better, but the very idea of a trip right now – and that long winding drive — exhausts me. But 90th birthday parties don’t come around that often, and everyone else will be there – Baba’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, dozens in all. […]
by Beverley Golden
My mother Lillian Golden is turning 96 this year. She is vivacious and vital; has an impeccable memory, is beautiful, gracious and an inspiration to everyone who meets her. An inspiration of what aging gracefully can look like, in a culture that is obsessed with and idolizes youth.
She still lives in her own condo and is an active and integral part of the social scene in her building. She is strong, tenacious and stubborn and has never been in the hospital overnight, other than to have her children. She was well into her thirties when she had my brother Niel and I, which in those days, was considered old. […]
by Vivian Diller, Ph.D
As someone well into my fifties, the popular aphorism “50 is the new 15” makes me laugh. As a therapist who writes about the psychology of aging, it baffles me. Who are we kidding? Sure, being 50 today means something different than it did for our parents or grandparents — more of us are fit, active and expect to remain that way well into our 80s and 90s — but 50 to me, well, is simply the “new 50!” […]