• Freedom from the day-to-day effort of answering emails, conference calls, last-minute meetings, driving in traffic, and the pressure to perform. I’m taking a breather, a break, a much-needed vacation. In a few hours, I’m heading to La Jolla, California to stay at a friend’s house. She’s a new friend, someone I admire and deeply respect.…

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  • When you look up the word benign, you’ll find that the adjective describes having a gentle and kind disposition; a mild character that does not threaten life or health; or having no significant impact. For most including myself, benign represents a clean bill of health from the dreaded “c” word. A sigh of relief that…

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  • If you’re a black and white kind of person, you probably think there’s only ever one answer. Just like there’s right and wrong, good and bad, up and down. But, how right is right? How wrong is wrong? And if you’re always right, why am I always wrong? All of this boils down to limited…

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  • I woke up in the middle of the night to find my hand moving of its own accord into my shirt to feel the side of my left breast near my armpit. There was a small formation underneath the surface, the size of a small stone. I fell back asleep with thoughts of breast cancer…

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  • Last night I dreamed I was in my cousin’s childhood home in Avon Lake. In the dream, I went into the bathroom and closed both of the doors for privacy. While looking at my face in the mirror, I took a cotton ball and wiped my left cheek with cleanser. When I took the cotton…

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  • As I sit down to write this evening, I hear sirens from a fire truck rolling down the street. Whenever I hear sirens, I say a little prayer. I visualize a light and love for the best possible outcome going over the vehicle, protecting the people on board speeding to their destination and the waiting person…

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  • Last night I caught up on this week’s episode of Glee. I can’t watch it on Tuesday’s any longer because it’s too fluffy after a mind bender like Lost. Towards the end, they performed their version of Bonnie Tyler’s classic one-hit wonder, “A Total Eclipse of the Heart.” This is one of my dad’s favorite…

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  • A few months ago, I was out for drinks with two friends after work. We posed the question to each other: Use three words to describe yourself. This wasn’t easy for me. You might not know it yet, but I’m wordy. Then, we determined three words to describe each other. Two of the words that…

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  • Today, I finally let you go. The fog has lifted. The rain swept through and cleaned the city’s smog from the windows. I always thought this would feel like a death. The death of you and the could-have-been of us. But, it didn’t. Hanging on was the deeper death of all my hopes and dreams…

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