The After Holiday Crash

The After Holiday Crash

My daughter Christine has Lupus and she thinks she is invincible. She tries to overcompensate for the times she feels like hell, by being Superwoman, Supermom and Martha Stewart, all rolled into one. In the weeks preceeding Christmas her home looked like a Winter Wonderland, tastefully decorated wi

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A Time To Give Thanks

A Time To Give Thanks

This is the time of year that inspires us to examine our lives with a closer look and make a checklist of what we are truly thankful for. No matter what your religion or your background, Thanksgiving has become a national holiday where we are reminded to take an inventory of the many blessings we of

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Lupus - A Mother's View

Lupus – A Mother’s View

IN Honor of Mother's Day in the US, my mother wrote this article about being a mom of a child with Lupus. My daughter Christine has had Lupus, with the accompanying vast array of symptoms, since she was 15 years old. During college, in her attempt to explain her illness, she wrote about Lup

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Excuse Me For Saying It, But Lupus Sucks!

Excuse Me For Saying It, But Lupus Sucks!

May is Lupus Awareness Month! How Will You Spread Awareness? My daughter Christine has a tee shirt with the above logo emblazened on it, and I have always disliked the crudeness of that phrase. Every time she wore that shirt I would wince and tell her how I hated that expression, but she would just

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10 Lessons My Daughter Has Taught Me

My daughter Christine is my hero and my inspiration. I know every mother loves her daughter and thinks the world of them, but Chris has taught me so much. Chris was a vibrant child full of life and loads of energy, which she channeled into dancing. As a student at the High School for Performing A

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Love Can Be a Rice Ball

In my family I was always the one the children went to for hugs and kisses. I was the mush, the softie, the emotional dishrag. My husband on the other hand was the cool one who sometimes was even perceived as distant. We are ying and yang, Mars and Venus and most of the time it works for us, that is

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Remembering Emma, in honor of Breast Cancer Month

Good friends are hard to find. Great friends come along once in a lifetime if you are lucky. I have had a group of friends since my college days and by some standards, we are an odd bunch of diverse women. Madalyn is a married mother and businesswoman, who as I write, is on a plane to re-locate wi

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Care Giver Support: Handling the Unexpected With an Elderly Loved One

The other day my mother had a medical emergency and I was totally unprepared. I had always prided myself on the fact that since my daughter Christine had Lupus, I was pretty good at handling emergency hospital visits. But this time it was my 82 year old mom and I did not have the situation or myself

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Personal Essay: The Let Down

On September 30, my daughter Christine, aka "Spoon Lady," got married. The preparations took over a year in the making. Though Chris and Frank did most of the planning, it was fun to hear about each step along the way. I looked forward to food tastings, bridal dress shopping, mother-of-the-bride dre

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Not So Invisible Anymore?

My daughter Christine has, what is sometimes called, an invisible disease. Though she looks teriffic most of the time, she has suffered, for over a dozen years, with the debilitating and painful symptoms of Lupus. It's become an inside family joke when people commented almost incredulously- "but yo

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