Letters from Rona / Sort by date

This holiday Monday, I have our loft to myself, with sunlight streaming from end to end of the place and none of the usual Monday sound track (rumbling buses, boisterous pedestrians) from the street outside. A year or even a week from now, I won't remember the sweet languor of this moment in my life unless I capture it now. [more]

Women learn early to bite their tongues and let other people have the floor. We're so well trained in solicitude that we often need permission to speak. That's what my friend Elaine provides every summer at a raucous dinner party in our garden. She always asks us, one by one, to tell the group how our lives have changed since last year. The resulting stories prove that there's no such thing as a life without drama. [more]

When I first learned to read, I liked to flip ahead to the very last line to savour the secret of the ending. I knew this was not the approved way to read, which made it all the more seductive. I was supposed to be patient and let the author surprise me, but my notion of a surprise had nothing to do with what happened at the end, or did not. It was all about the story's destiny. A good closing sentence is the pinnacle toward which the story has been climbing. [more]

Weddings were created to celebrate married love. In the age of Botox and liposuction, they're becoming celebrations of physical perfection. No wrinkles, yellowed teeth or flat chests allowed. [more]

I've read enough hand-wringing news reports about pre-teen girls giving blow jobs and dressing like hookers. The usual suspects (academics and therapists) keep telling me the same old story. I wanted to hear from a real expert: a young woman who has lived it and has the guts to tell the truth. Now along comes Kerry Cohen, author of the brave and eye-opening Loose Girl: a Memoir of Promiscuity. [more]

The beauty of working at home, according to the popular notion, has something to do with the dress code: you can get down to business in your bathrobe (or nothing at all). The downside, I've learned the hard way, is that it's just too easy to find yourself working all the time. That's why I now go out every morning to a funky rented office around the corner. [more]

Here's another sign that the media are at last portraying the mentally ill as fully rounded people you might know and love. On the New York Times web site, you can watch men and women with bipolar disorder speak frankly and powerfully about their incurable but treatable condition. And they're using their real names, too. [more]

Last fall my sister Joyce and I shared the truth of our tangled, sometimes crazy-making, never less than loving relationship in MORE magazine. Heartfelt comments have been coming our way ever since. If you missed our essays, here's where to find them online, plus the next chapter of the story. [more]

July used to be vacation time, when my city cleared out and I felt like the queen of the sidewalk. Now swarming crowds tell me people are staying home in the new era of soaring gas prices and stripped-down flight schedules. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing. Traveling less will challenge us all to seek other kinds of adventures, creatively, socially and intellectually. [more]

I never guessed I'd become dependent on sleeping pills, but night after night of tossing and turning made a desperate woman of me. Now it's time to start getting through the night without the insomniac's little helper. So I've just started a course of sleep behaviour therapy. [more]

Canada's Governor General, Michaelle Jean, has always struck me as a woman of vision and courage, the kind of pathfinder you'd want your daughter to become. Her quiet resolve was in the spotlight when she presented Dr. Henry Morgentaler with the Order of Canada. Now she's facing a tidal wave of anger from pro-lifers while polls show most Canadians are on her side. I've been silent until now myself. But that's going to change right now. It's time she heard from the rest of us. [more]

When Dr. Henry Morgentaler received the Order of Canada for his unstinting, often life-threatening efforts to make abortion safe, legal and accessible, I thought he deserved the honour. Yet I couldn't rejoice; it would have felt like clapping at a funeral. I had no words to frame my conflicted thoughts until I watched a brave, remorseless movie about illegal abortion in Romania's darkest days. [more]