In 1967, my father, then Governor of California, knelt in prayer with his pastor Reverend Donn Moomaw, asking God for guidance on the death penalty case that was before him. Aaron Mitchell had shot and killed a police officer during

Sunday afternoon I went to sit in my backyard and read, but the words I wanted to read were not the ones that would stick with me. At the house behind me, the young boy, around 12 or 13, had

With the most recent stories about Herschel Walker’s history of paying for an abortion, and his hypocrisy when it comes to his political anti-abortion stance, another part of his past is getting less attention. That would be an incident in

With the new Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab from Biogen and Eisai showing promise, Alzheimer’s is currently in the news. I am as hopeful as everyone else that science can find a treatment and possibly a cure for a disease that has

A few years after my father died, I moved into a new rental house and my mother wanted to come see it.  I was still fixing it up, and there was a painter there who had been born in Mexico. When

In 1983, my parents gave a dinner for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in Los Angeles. It was held on a soundstage at Twentieth Century Fox Studios and a set designer brought in live trees and other foliage to simulate

Nearly forty-five years ago, I was raped by a music executive in his office after business hours. I told no one, not even my boyfriend. I blamed myself for accepting an appointment at an hour when the building would be

Once upon a time in America we understood how to grieve together. We understood that our identity as a country was wrapped up in our willingness to be tender with each other when horrible things happen. That time seems to

I grew up listening to conversations about America the beautiful, America the free, the bold, the land of promise. Long before my father entered politics, he spoke reverentially about the country that allowed a boy born to an alcoholic father

In Naomi Judd’s 1993 book Love Can Build a Bridge, she wrote about “vanishing silently into the darkness.” I thought about that line this morning when I read about her death. Her daughters were careful and respectful in their statement,