Be your own best patient advocate

Patients and their loved ones need to be their own best advocates for medical care. Here, I share our recent experience during my husband’s heart attack. Spoiler alert: A formal complaint against a doctor has been filed.

Adjusting to our new normal as parents of a Marine

On Oct. 29, 2018, our son raised his right hand and was sworn into the United States Marine Corps. He gave us a hug and kiss bye, handed me his backpack, wallet and cell phone and got ready to board a bus with a handful of other recruits. Nothing but his driver’s license, social security […]

Breaking my silence

NOTE: About six years ago I started this blog, and for the first year I loved writing it – it was cathartic and it helped me connect with others in a unique way. But sometimes life is tricky. Sometimes we stop doing what is right for us because … well there can be a lot […]

Homeward bound

I haven’t had the bug to write in a long time. I think it may have been a combination of exhaling after a long and difficult year (and I’m talking about 2013, no idea where 2014 went), and trying not to jinx the good stuff that seemed to be coming down the pipeline. But it’s […]

Time flies when you’re making excuses

Awhile back I posted an excerpt from what I hoped would be my debut novel. I had been away from it for much too long, but spent some time last year on revisions, camping out at Panera or Popovers, tweaking and rewriting. And I made my final run-through while nursing a newly broken ankle during […]

Laughter really is the best medicine

Saturday was a good day. My boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch watching TV together, our first time alone since the night before his big cancer surgery a week and a half earlier. That’s when I heard it, when I saw it. I forget what commercial came on – that’s not important. What […]

This is my 45 …

This blog post about turning 45 has been all over social media since Wednesday. It’s one that many women can relate to – all being in the same or similar boats as the writer. That’s one of the great things about writing – having people truly connect with your words. It was beautifully written and I […]

An open letter to 2013: Good riddance

Dear 2013, Sorry my farewell letter is a little late, I’ve been a bit busy dealing with the messes you left behind. I can’t say I was sorry to see you go … while I knew exactly how long you’d be here, I still think you overstayed your welcome. I know I wasn’t the only […]

Grumpy Grinch’s nasty-gram can’t ruin Christmas spirit

  We all have years that our Christmas spirit is a bit low. For me, it’s this year. It’s been a tough year in many ways – difficult situations made harder by bad news, stress and the unexpected loss of a loved one. The lack of Christmas spirit led me to do something I’ve never done before: I bought […]

Mom’s favorite Halloween treat

For years my Halloween memories were about my mom and her tradition of giving us hot dogs and beans for dinner. It was fast and easy, and got us out the door quickly to go trick-or-treating, pillow cases in hand. But a new memory was created on Halloween 1995. I was living in Florida, and […]

Tragedy in my hometown

People in every town say it: That would never happen here. But it did happen, in my hometown of Danvers, Mass. I don’t live there anymore, and aside from six months in 1997-98, and college breaks, I truly haven’t lived full time in Danvers since I left for college in 1987. But it will always be […]

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the right, left or in the middle

A week or so ago, I did something I very rarely do: I posted something political on Facebook, a link to a column about the government shutdown. I had seen it posted on a college classmate’s page, read it and thought it was interesting so I shared it. I never made any comments about the […]

Was it there all along, right in front of us?

I had an epiphany two weeks ago. I can’t tell you what it was, not yet anyway. But my nearly three years of worrying, wondering, stressing and panicking came to a screeching halt. I had seen my life going one of three ways – one path would require me to accomplish what I had been trying […]

The many benefits of mental health days

I’ve been struggling a bit lately with stress, and frustrations and meltdowns and finally decided that if I didn’t take a couple of days off – mental health days – that I may kill someone. Or cry, again. In the span of about five days: My hot water heater died and flooded my basement, the […]

An everyday hero: His 911 call lead to the recovery of missing teen

Every day I work with heroes – doctors, nurses and others who save lives. And I get to help tell their stories through the media – stories of bringing a patient back to life after he arrested more than 15 times in an hour, stories of people who gave a kidney to a stranger either […]

Abandoning the pursuit of polish

I’ve been thinking about polish a lot lately. Not shoe polish, nail polish or furniture polish, but personal and professional polish. It means different things to different people – for me, polish isn’t about experience, education, proficiency or professionalism. To me, polish is more about personality, relationship and communication style, appearance and delivery. One isn’t […]

Joining the few, and making us proud

As I got into my car Friday evening after work, I noticed I had missed a call from my brother. I called him back on my personal cell as I sat in the parking lot, and as I waited for the beep, I hit the Facebook app on my work cell phone. That’s when I […]

Who won the best ribs contest? This guy

Jimmy with his Best Ribs trophy 2013 — second year in a row. There is something uniquely satisfying about being able to reach people by doing something we love. For me, it’s through writing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world to hear from readers who tell me that something I wrote helped […]

Stranger danger: Big difference between a connection in social media, and one in the real world

This one might come off a little cold, and I’m OK with that because I think some folks might need a little refresher on social media etiquette, especially when it comes to professional networking, and sometimes sugarcoating doesn’t cut it. See, here’s the thing: No one likes job hunting, especially in a tough market. And […]

Breaking with tradition on vacation

They say it’s not a party till something breaks. Not sure if that applies to vacations, too. If so, it officially became vacation around 10 pm Sunday night, a little more than 24 hours after we arrived at the campground we’ve been coming to for years – just four years for me, but anywhere from […]

There’s comfort in consistency (even on, or maybe especially on, vacation)

Until a few years ago, I never visited the same place twice on vacation. The only place I’ve ever said I’d go back to is Paris, I’d do that in a heartbeat. I still haven’t returned, but at least I finally convinced my boyfriend to get a passport, so we’re one step closer. The way […]

A sneak peek at what I hope will be my debut novel

I wasn’t sure what to write this week, so I thought since I’ve mentioned working on a novel that I’d grab a few pages and share them. The current revision is still a work in progress, so it’s not ready to share with anyone in its entirety, especially since I’ve been slacking lately. Maybe sharing […]

Next step to lowering stress? Giving up the grudges

I’ve been on a mission to lower my stress, and I’ve been doing pretty well. Giving up guilt and my new approach to exercise (i.e. actually exercising) has helped a lot. So has this blog – simply writing and putting it out there for people to read, relate and respond to is incredibly cathartic; it’s […]

Life can be messy, especially with socks on the floor and sauce on the ceiling

I want a candy bar. Or a brownie. A cream cheese brownie. I’m a little tense and cranky today and snacks fix crankiness, everyone knows that. It could be the weather – we just wrapped up the third rainiest June on record and July is off to a gray start. Or it could be because […]

Bitten in the a** by her past

I don’t typically write controversial posts, I stay out of political or topical debates. But sometimes it can’t be helped. So here we go … Most of us aren’t in the public eye, but what if we were? We put a lot of stuff “out there” with social media, but what about the things you […]

The stars finally align – actually, they fell off a cupcake

I keep wondering when that moment is going to hit me. That moment that makes me realize if I don’t make some changes in my lifestyle, things will get really bad. Worse than they are now, and they are Bad with a capital B. I thought it would happen when I saw a photo, any […]

Perpetual Post-it notes on my door and my dash

I’m a list maker and reminder writer. A smartphone calendar filler. I’m one of those people who adds things I’ve already completed to my to-do list just so I can cross it off. I have pieces of paper and notebooks everywhere. It’s one of the reasons I mentioned to my boyfriend the other day that […]

Digging a little deeper for the good stories

Many years ago, one of my sisters told me she stopped reading the newspaper and watching the news. No newspapers? No news radio on the drive home, or TV news before bed? No trolling news websites? Newspaper ink flows through my veins, so it was inconceivable to me that someone would voluntarily avoid the news […]

Sunny day, burning with UV rays …

I should have known it would happen. There I was, sitting on my sister’s deck, chatting before going out for lunch the other day, enjoying the beautiful water view, and it happened. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider the possibility. After all, I was wearing a somewhat large, bib-style necklace earlier in […]

Pomp, circumstance, first jobs and first apartments

Shortly after I graduated from college, I moved 800 miles away to start my first real job: copy editing for a group of farming magazines in North Carolina. It wasn’t quite as glamorous as I had hoped my first job would be, but it was a great experience and I met fantastic people, many of […]

Don’t let the smile fool you

There is something deeply satisfying about telling someone off. It doesn’t happen often – I’m typically a get-along-to-go-along kind of person. Just as well because I’ve heard from more than one person over the years that they don’t take me seriously when I get mad. Apparently I smile while yelling. I’ve tried to work on […]

The best ‘Day’ of the year isn’t on most calendars

Two years ago, I received the best Mother’s Day gift a woman could imagine – except, it wasn’t on Mother’s Day and I don’t have children. My boyfriend’s then-11-year-old son and I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast one Saturday in mid-May, when he said he didn’t think it was right that I […]

Take a deep breath and power through the tough times

It’s hard to write when everything that’s on your mind is off limits. When everything is too new, too raw to share with people outside of your inner circle. When you don’t have all the answers. No matter how many times I’ve tried writing this past week – trying to write about the Boston Marathon […]

Stepping outside of the comfort zone

I have never been what you’d call a “fashionista.” My clothing and shoe selection was much more fun when I was younger – I have especially fond memories of a pair of sparkly stilettos in high school and teal suede cowboy boots that I bought while living in North Carolina after college. But these days, […]

Cheers to the ladies who lunch – and make time for friendship

Growing up, our girlfriends are the ones who know our deepest secrets – the boys we have crushes on, details of our first kiss, when we’re mad at our parents. We share the angst of adolescence and the temptations of the teenage years. And then we get older. Life gets busy, and very often the […]

U call that spelling?

When a colleague encouraged me to join Twitter a couple of years ago, I worried I’d become grammatically inept. Worried I’d start using single letters or numbers to convey two- or three-letter words; that I’d forget how to spell correctly, or even worse – that I wouldn’t care. It was enough to make a spelling […]

Go ahead, talk to strangers (you might learn a thing or two …)

Most parents teach their children not to talk to strangers. Personally, I think our mom encouraged us to. Talking to just about anyone seems to be a Slingsby trait, and it’s led us to some really cool experiences over the years. But this latest one? This takes the cake. I got a call at work […]

Fact or fiction? I’ll never tell

One of the hurdles of writing fiction, for me anyway, has been learning to let go of the worry that folks you know will start to look at you differently. Your mom, friends or co-workers – they’ll read your manuscript (or ahem, novel, once it’s published) and while a steamy sex scene, gory murder, or […]

Under pressure

In January 2011, a few months after my doctor started giving me the evil eye and threatening to put me on blood pressure meds if I didn’t get it under control, my blood pressure spiked: 176/98. Yes, I’m overweight. No, I don’t exercise (though I do pay for the membership). Yes, I should know better […]

Oh the irony …

One of the ironic things about this blog is that it’s one of my vehicles for reducing stress, yet since it’s a blog, I have to use social media to promote it. Social media sometimes stresses me out. Don’t get me wrong, I love keeping up with friends on Facebook, I enjoy posting photos with […]

From the beginning

Several years ago I ended my seven-plus year stint as a lifestyle columnist and 15-year run as a newspaper copyeditor, and moved to the “dark side” – public relations. Since 2009, I’ve worked in health care PR, and I have to say, it’s pretty cool. I work with super smart people, get to meet grateful […]

A bit about me …

This About Me part has changed a bit. Because I’ve changed a bit. The original About Me post can be found below, posted when I first launched the blog in 2013. I now live in New Hampshire and work in Massachusetts. Rhode Island is a distant, but very sweet memory. I haven’t set foot in […]