Catherine Gigante-Brown

At first, I felt like an abandoned ten-year-old, dropped off at a remote summer camp—with the extra added attraction of no cell phone reception or Wi-Fi. I thought the hardest part of the weekend was going to be picking out a robe. Boy, was I wrong!

Who says feminists don't love alpha males and cooking?

To the tattoo artist, I was a flesh canvas that she could transform into something beautiful.

I dreaded putting him back on Concerta in the fall but I knew I had to. Or did I?

I saw my present mother-in-law in a whole new light the first time she held my newborn son.

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 immediately developed a hot-and-heavy girlcrush on the wild, wacky, brash, candid, feminist, rubber-faced comedian—and you should too.

If the odds of getting cancer are like Powerball, why couldn't I be a scratch-off millionaire?

" Sure enough, the doorbell rang one early June day and there she was: curvy, seductive body, smooth black skin, bright blue eyes."

When David was about 12, he told me that he wanted to take the train to school alone. My gut reaction was, “No way in hell!” I mean, we live in a safe neighborhood and all, but David has ADHD and was easily distracted. What if he missed his stop? What if someone messed with him?