If you’ve never personally experienced institutional discrimination — racism, sexism, homophobia — there’s no way you can understand it. You can’t get how deep it goes, how irresistible it is. If you’ve never been the target of any kind of institutionalized stigma it’s easy to think each incident or encounter…

Anorexia nervosa is one of the most pernicious diseases around. People who develop it are sick, on average, for four to seven years. A third never recover. Ten percent die from the disease, either from malnutrition or from suicide. Some of these depressing statistics can be chalked up to the…

It began with an email, one that dropped into my inbox from someone I did not know. Over the years of our correspondence her email names and address changed, from Azhe’n to Be Love to Opus Literati to Private Soulstice. Eventually she trusted me enough to give me her real…

I’d been dreading this moment for 27 years, since the day my older daughter was born. As I stood holding her at the hospital window that night, looking into the darkening intersection of Sixth Avenue and 11th Street, I thought Someday she’ll leave me. She did, of course, moving out…

Dear Republicans, It’s human nature to want power. Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians and Green Party members and Independents — we all want the power to run things the way we think they should be run. And as human beings we have our own interests at heart. Preservation of the…