Women's Voices For Change

Marriage & Life Partners · Relationships & Dating

Is This Love?

By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.

The science of romance isn’t “romantic,” but focuses instead on practical issues. Research confirms that believing in soul mates—or destiny, “the idea that there is exactly one person you were absolutely put on this earth to find—can and probably will backfire.”

Film & Television

Step—Lethal Ladies, Lofty Goals

By Alexandra MacAaron

As the “Black Lives Matter” movement gains momentum around them, spurred on by incidents in Sanford, Ferguson, New York, and Waller County, as well as Baltimore, you can understand why step feels so relevant and personal to the girls. There is a fierce defiance to their routines. These young women are determined.

Health

August Sun Protection and Skin Care

By Anetta Reszko, M.D., Ph.D.

Now that we’re in August, our sun protection enthusiasm might be declining. Nonetheless, considering that over 70 percent of UV radiation exposure occurs in the summer months, sun protection is as important as ever. Here are important tips on skin care.

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Migrant Earth,” by Deema Shehabi

By Rebecca Foust

Left explicitly unsaid but everywhere in the poem is the speaker’s terrible grief for her loss and also perhaps a roil of sorrow, regret, and even anger about what her mother had to endure during her life. That these emotions are hinted at but not stated is part of the power of “Migrant Earth.”

Lifestyle

Molly Fisk: Naming Your Teeth

By Molly Fisk

A three-year-old I know just explained to his mom that he needed an umbrella because it was hot in the yard and “there isn't a shade structure.” Coffee almost flew out my nose when she told me this, I was laughing so hard.

Books · Emotional Health

Man’s Search for Meaning

By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.

The most helpful insight of Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Film & Television

Landline: A Nostalgic Look at Unconnected Romance in the 90s

By Alexandra MacAaron

Set in 1995 New York City, the movie 'Landline' examines how people connected, disconnected, and reconnected two decades ago. In many ways, it feels like a romantic comedy from that era. But, the movie doesn’t shy away from grittier real-life complications and adult language.

Menopause

Crisis Management of Hot Flashes and Flushes Without Hormone Therapy

By Patricia Yarberry Allen, M.D.

Hot flashes are the most frequent symptom of menopause and peri-menopause. More than two-thirds of North American women who are heading into menopause have hot flashes.

Poetry

Jane Underwood, Four Poems from When my Heart Goes Dark, I Turn the Porch Light On: “I Was Wrong,” “Song of Absence,” “Wild Fire,” and “Porch Light”

By Rebecca Foust

Cancer may have been what spurred Jane Underwood to begin writing again, but the poems transcend the specific circumstances of her illness to become a powerful meditation on mortality, the terminal illness that infects us all.

Lifestyle

Molly Fisk: Renting A Wife

By Molly Fisk

Long, long ago, I think it was the 1980s, a business appeared on the radar called Rent-a-Wife. For a reasonable sum per hour, they'd pick up your dry cleaning, wait for the plumber, return videos and library books, maybe do a little grocery shopping.

Money & Careers

Career Networking for the Introverted

By Phyllis Cohen

Networking can be a struggle whether you’re a shrinking violet or the life of the party. But before you make that first networking step, it’s crucial to know the two most important rules about why people do or do not get hired in the first place.

Film & Television

Capturing the Now, Larger than Life —The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography

By Alexandra MacAaron

Image after image of luminaries from her earlier career fade away as she pulls out what she calls “the b-sides,” akin to the extra song on the back of a popular record.

Fitness · Health

Shoulder Exercises: Key To Shoulder Injury Prevention

By Jonathan Urla, MFA

Today, Jonathan Urla, a member of our Medical Advisory Board, teaches us the fundamental shoulder exercises that can prevent many shoulder injuries.

Poetry

Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials: “Sweep,” “Adam,” and “Bro”

By Rebecca Foust

Grief invites—indeed sometimes demands—a response, and sometimes, as in 'Vanishing Points,' that response rises to the level of art that pays moving and powerful homage to those we have lost.

Health

Molly Fisk: Fair Weather

By Molly Fisk

I see people from all parts of my life at the fair: Cardiac Rehab buddies, grocery store bag-persons, kids I taught poetry to in the sixth grade. The fair sort of has its own rules: it's half Breughel painting, half time-travel science-fiction movie.

Emotional Health

How Do I look? The Body Positive Movement

By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.

There is a movement that has sprung up called “Body Positive.” It is meant to be a response to the widespread “fat-shaming” that is both ubiquitous and widely accepted.

Film & Television

‘The Big Sick’ — One Mother of a Rom-Com

By Alexandra MacAaron

It’s a joy to watch two “real people” (albeit unusually witty, clever and attractive “real people”) fall in and out and back in love. And, it’s particularly satisfying that their mothers have so much to do with it.

Ask Dr. Pat · Fitness

Ask Dr. Pat: What Causes Shoulder Injuries? How Can I Prevent Them?

By Patricia Yarberry Allen, M.D.

Women in mid-life are more likely to develop shoulder problems, which can be minor or serious. Shoulder injuries most commonly occur during sports activities, exercise without proper form or with the use of weights that are too heavy, and work-related tasks or projects around the home.

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Sieve,” by April Ossmann

By Rebecca Foust

“Sieve” begins, as all good poems should, with an attention-grabbing first line, “Young men seem all edges,” and then ups the interest ante with two delightful and apt similes, “shoulders like shelves” and my favorite, “bellies like slides / to the most obvious / of pleasures.” That’s a sly, possibly punning allusion to sex, of course, and one I haven’t seen before but that feels just right.

Lifestyle

Molly Fisk: Ferris Wheel

By Molly Fisk

When I was 14, I developed a short list of requirements for being a good girlfriend. Heaven knows where I got this idea, maybe from reading 'Seventeen Magazine.' You had to be able to gut a fish and cook it. You had to be brave enough to go skydiving (but only once per boyfriend).

Fitness · Nutrition

Weight Control: The Art of the Possible

By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.

When approaching weight as a health issue, women in this country are experiencing an epidemic of body image problems. We are subject to the idea that there is only one standard of beauty and that it is almost always the young kind.

Film & Television

Netflix Review: ‘To The Bone’ — Dying to be Thin

By Alexandra MacAaron

Writer/producer and first-time director Marti Noxon takes eating disorders seriously herself. Noxon began her own struggle with anorexia and bulimia as a teenager. In her new indie movie 'To The Bone,' which premiered at Sundance and is available on Netflix, she draws on that experience.

Health

Good Posture Decreases Back and Neck Pain and Improves How You Look

By Dr. James F. Wyss, MD, PT

Maintenance of good posture promotes better health and fitness and can improve self-confidence. Ideal posture can be challenging to maintain and the “bad posture” that develops actually requires more energy to maintain during routine tasks (e.g. sitting or standing) and can lead to fatigue and pain.

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “The Way Back,” by Francine Sterle

By Susan Cohen

Francine Sterle’s “The Way Back” enchanted me from the first time I read it. First, her lush lyricism. Then, the poem’s payoff, an ending that is emotional without being the least bit sentimental. What draws me back again and again, though, is the way she controls breath on the page.