Melissa Petro

The other day my friend on Facebook had made a remark about how there are people who have multiple income streams and travel abroad constantly and drive cars and eat at restaurants every week and then talk about class privilege like they don't have it and in my mind I was like, Oh. Yeah. She’s right. In the past six months or so, my life has dramatically changed.

C-PTSD stands for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) or complex trauma. It’s a diagnostic term for a set of symptoms resulting from prolonged social or interpersonal stress, especially in the context of interpersonal dependence. It’s a tricky diagnosis to land on, given the way trauma is dealt with in the mind and by society. Like Kristof, I wouldn’t have told you there was anything wrong with my childhood. It took years of therapy to catalog early life experiences that were profoundly affecting, if not necessarily severe.

Sure, "friends forever" sounds nice. In theory. But sometimes it's better that two people just not be friends.

When I first got sober, I started to accept that the “happy” occasions in life — holidays, birthdays and other special events — might not only feel happy. When I’m “supposed” to feel good, I feel nervous, anxious, and embarrassed. The center of attention, I feel vulnerable and on display.

Everyone I talk to agrees: Apparently, wedding planning is the most awful thing ever! Seriously, I did not know that when I first got engaged. This got me thinking... What else don’t I know?

You may have heard the old joke that 98% of people masturbate, and the other two percent are lying.

If you missed my weekly column this summer all about getting engaged and planning a wedding, here’s the highlight reel: after doing

If you watch TV and movies hoping to be emotionally moved or intellectually challenged, you know that means you’ll some

After gaining as much as forty pounds and pushing a cantaloupe out my vagina, I wondered: will my body ever be the same?

The biggest fashion mistake of my lifetime may not be what I wore, but what I didn’t.