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Our June news-email featured information about research on the brain. Because the topic of reduced cognition in aging is the “elephant in the room” of which everyone is taking notice, we want to present the information here for you again in a composite: In recent decades, the aging brain has…

Do you suffer from occasional anxiety or does anxiety rule your life? Does it feel like anxious thoughts run through your brain with no “off” switch available? Anxiety is a reaction to stress, which is in itself an overdose of pressure on your mind and body. Anxiety can get in…

When I taught a class in memoir writing to a group of octogenarians, mostly women, I was amazed to discover how happy they were. Age 55 at the time, I certainly thought of myself as being in a more desirable stage of life. Yet I remember them saying things like,…

How can students best use their spare time during their summer break to refresh and renew in preparation for a more successful Fall term?  As a former school administrator, I’ve had a lot of experience with students. I’ve studied published research as well as anecdotal reports about private schools and…

I’d like to personally honor those who sincerely want to evolve greater awareness and develop themselves. However, I’m concerned about—what I consider to be— a misunderstanding that many women have which may cause them to waste their precious time in this pursuit.  The principle is simple: a goal is not…

They say you can’t tell a book by its cover. Take Geraldine Norman, a seemingly staid, conservatively dressed English woman whom I met last December in Suffolk, England.  At that time she merely told me she was a writer. It took a full sit-down interview to find out that she…

Recently, I was reading an article about “SAD”—Seasonal Affective Disorder—and thought how unfortunate it is that people are subjected to depression by their own body’s reaction to the change in season. And, unfortunately for us, SAD is diagnosed four times more often in women than in men. But Dr. Norman…

Like many female veterans, Fei Fei Chen joined the US Army as a newly minted high school grad to see the world and serve her country. That was in 2001, and today in 2019 she is still trying to process the experience. Deployed to Iraq as a paralegal specialist, Fei…

“It’s really uncomfortable, sometimes like being overdosed on caffeine, sometimes like something has to be fixed, even if you don’t know what that is—it’s the opposite of the sense of well-being.”  Everyone knows what it can feel like when they’re anxious. But is that feeling the only sign of anxiety?…

One of my friends just had a knee replacement. I read up a bit about the post-surgical experience and kept in close touch with her about her impressions in case I—or someone whose caregiver I might have to be—must someday undergo that surgery too. Here are a few important general…