Catherine Gigante-Brown

Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions wasn't your typical cutesie baby fare. It was raw, real—and unabashedly funny.

I know it’s not a politically correct one, but I’ve got a confession to make: earth-friendly hotels stink. There, I said it.

The office cubicle is indeed a strange bird. Here's how to survive life in a box without driving you—or your office mates—crazy.

I was 21 –– a Catholic, heterosexual college student, living at home in Brooklyn and still trying to discover who I was. At the crossroads of her life, Lorde knew exactly who she was. She was waging a war against cancer and sharing an old house in Staten Island with her kids and partner. But maybe we weren’t so different after all.

I sat obediently in her chair atop four ancient copies of the Yellow Pages. Crossing my fingers, I prayed Catholic schoolgirl prayers.

I thought cancer was behind me. Until I had a weird pain near my left ovary which lasted for several days. It felt a lot like ovulation...Only, at 56, that train had left the station a long time ago.

8. Educate, don’t fixate.

Re-imagining the cervix, preserving the earth, facing breast cancer a whole new way…Annie Sprinkle’s wisdom abounds. “Life is a performance art piece,” she said...

A midtown Manhattan studio was recently the site of liberation-both on and offscreen-when Shenshean

"Sometimes David wore his hair spiked like a cockscomb. Others, he wore it feathery like a baby chick. He wore his Mohawk to summer camp (exchanging encouraging head chucks with another older camper who sported one, too) and even to Vacation Bible School—no judgment there."