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As many women know, being a wife, mother and well, a woman, means you often must lead a life of compromise.  

This column I wrote in August seemed to resonate with many women who, like me, had to make--and continue to make--a choice between pursuing their dreams or helping their husband's and children pursue theirs.  It continues to remain in the top 10 most read blogs, along with the one I wrote that said, among other things, that every benchmark in a son's life is just another good-bye.  

Last week, during the process of doing a “hard reset” on my cell phone, I was asked to answer the following security question by the customer service rep:  What’s my favorite food?  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had given as my answer when I had first registered this phone.

“Try steak,” I told him.       

It wasn’t your usual family gathering.  My mom had summoned all six of her children home at Christmas so she could go from room to room, assigning each of us her possessions. 

She was dying of a terminal illness, already a year into her death march.  One down, three to go, it turned out. 

Lately, I feel as though I've been surrounded by bad news:  the sputtering economy; people I love continue to struggle with mental illness and addiction; a number of close friends’ children in dire situations, as well as other friends wrestling with personal and financial crises.  Add to that my own business deadlines, too much work and too little time, plus all the low points that come with being an entrepreneur, and well, let’s just say that some days it feels as if the weight of the world is sitting on my chest making it hard to breathe. 

But instead of feeling paralyzed or letting myself go into a funk, I sit here watching a very cute YouTube video a friend posted on Facebook that features a 6

I remember as a young mother reading Virginia Woolf’s words that noted for a woman to write, she needed a room of her own and freedom from interruption and thinking to myself, “I could really use that.”  So I set up a room of my own—an office to work and write—and warned my sons that they could only disturb me if the house was on fire or they were bleeding. 

But as the years went by and my sons grew along with my career, a room of my own was no longer enough.  Because as long as my husband or my kids were in the house, my instinct as a wife and mother to please and be available to others made me switch from anticipating inspiration to wanting to meet everyone’s needs.     

Lately, I must confess, I’ve b

I am the proud owner of a new dog named Rudy.  I didn’t need Rudy.  Nor did I really want him.    

But at the time, I was moving my oldest son out of our home and into his own apartment in New York City, helping my second son pack for a semester in Italy, congratulating my third son on passing his driver’s test and realizing that I suddenly had to look up to my fourth son, who was too tall (not to mention, way too cool) to s

My oldest son, Sean, came home for a visit last weekend.  He doesn’t get home much anymore, having moved to New York City six months ago to begin his first ”real” job with an accounting firm.  In fact, last weekend was his first trip home since Christmas.  

I suppose that’s the problem with children: they grow up. And leave home.  And live their own lives.    

In the past few months, I’ve reconnected on Facebook and LinkedIn with a lot of classmates and a few old boyfriends from high school and college. One friend has the distinction of having introduced me to my future husband in high school; another friend sat next to me in our college freshman English class. Many of these people used to be very important to me; their opinions once mattered. Many I haven’t seen or talked to in more than 25 years.