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,

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about grief. In the six years that I ran my support group, Beyond Alzheimer’s, grief was a frequent topic. And even when it wasn’t being actively discussed, it hovered in the

I was in grade school when I learned in History class about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” in the 30s and 40s. My initial image was of the president sitting beside a fireplace speaking to the country.  Having grown up with

In the Los Angeles neighborhood where I grew up there is an intersection where four streets meet. The area in the middle is a wide circle and when I was a child I dreamed I was standing there, waiting for