I'm no scientist, but I'll dare extrapolate and say that it's pretty obvious that the more you struggle to recall something, the smarter you are!

John Travolta is getting old, despite what his hair is trying to tell us.

This is America; our icons are complicated.

Wanting to be loved and appreciated connects us all.

Contrary to the negative stereotype that folks who swear have poor vocabularies, a fluency in taboo language correlates with overall verbal fluency. The more words you know, the more you know... and the more colorfully you can express yourself, with nuance, metaphor, and emotion.

I'm squandering invaluable gray matter by censoring myself.

Mother's Day is a bittersweet day for many of us. We all have mothers, but some of us have lost them.

I remember my mom sitting at our kitchen table, paying bills with a small smile. She'd sigh and say, 'I'm so blessed to be able to pay these.' She knew it was about what you have.

I tell my kids all the time that I'm so lucky they chose me to be their mom.

Manspread, mansplaining, manterrupting - all of it, whether conscious or not, diminishes women's voices, minds, and bodies.

If you don't know what mansplaining is, or manterrupting or manspread, then you're probably a guy.

Social media provides a constant platform on which to feature what we deem beautiful, meaningful, and worthy.

I think the curation consternation is this: Just because you like something or list something, are you really curating?

One man's content is another woman's crap. And the crappy content - let's call it crontent - will never go away.

Not that I'm any good at it, but the beauty of meditation is that it liberates us from our own thoughts.

To my knowledge, there are, pretty much, two ways to be interesting: One is to actually do interesting things, achieve the remarkable. The other way to be interesting is to be interested, curious about the world and about other people - not relentlessly revelatory about yourself.

Despite amazing advances in fertility to help older women get pregnant, the complications, increased chances of autism, and chromosomal abnormalities are significant considerations.

Mothers of all ages delight in their children, but I don't know that, if I were younger, I would feel as acutely, profoundly, preciously grateful for every smile, squeal, and - yes - diaper blowout.

If I could have had my baby sooner, I would have, simply to spend more years with him.

I'm an old mom of a young baby, and every moment matters.

Snowflakery is simply being human, which makes it a pretty flakey insult.

I once accidentally 'replied all' and sent an email complaining about my then-boyfriend to a bunch of strangers. It was meant for my friend who was a bride, but I ended up addressing her entire wedding party. Her marriage lasted; my relationship didn't.

Having grown up Catholic, my prayers were scripted - memorized and deployed in church and before bed. As a young adult, I veered off script and talked to God more plainly. And by 'talked to,' I mean that I basically asked for things to turn out the way I wanted them to.

I asked God for a healthy baby. An answer arrived in my daughter.

Famous people I've interviewed - powerful people, brilliant people, people whom you look at and think, 'Seriously, do you not have pores?' - have turned to me after interviews and asked, 'Was I okay? I hope I was okay.'

Approval makes the world go round, even if many of us want to transcend our hunger for it.

For weeks I ran through a mental inventory of my closet. Did I want to wear something new - to christen it and forever make it The Divorce Dress?

Whenever I told women - friends or acquaintances - that I had to go to divorce court, they'd invariably, without skipping a beat, ask, 'What are you going to wear?' It was like instant female solidarity: of course it mattered what I was going to wear.

Divorce court seemed to inspire in my girlfriends 1940s-era fashion fantasies, not only for me, but for themselves.

Am I an elitist because I like wine?

I have no problem being full-term pregnant and do not understand women who say, 'I can't wait to get this baby out of me!'

Whether you plan to labor with an epidural or the Pitocin Fairy pins you down or you end up having an emergency C-section, there are still choices you can make throughout your entire birth experience that allow you to feel some control over what is probably the most dramatic day of your life.

Getting a pedicure seems to be a standard pre-birth ritual, presumably because it is relaxing and makes you feel pretty even though your little piggies are going to be covered in those awesome no-skid hospital socks which I kept on for three days.

If you want to become a mother, you can. I promise. It may not happen the way you think, but it's possible. It just takes a combination of a little planning and a lot of living your life.

My first husband and I never came close to having kids.

I spent my late twenties and all of my thirties figuring out what I was supposed to be doing and where my home was.

Most of my best friends had children in their early 40s.

Donald Trump, who surely has lots of high-stakes issues on which to focus, is consumed with the appearance of women.

Making fun of people's looks is something that children do - mean children - and, in fact, linguists have determined that Trump actually speaks like a 3rd grader.

People who champion Trump say they don't want politics-as-usual. But 'politic' is also an adjective. It means 'tactful and diplomatic.' It's necessary for an elected official to be politic.

Are we a people who put politics over integrity? Or are we a country of voters and leaders, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, colleagues, humans who care about treating each other with basic dignity?

Hours after I gave birth to my first child, my husband cradled all five pounds of our boy and said, gently, 'Hi, Sweetpea.' Not 'Buddy' or 'Little Man.' Sweetpea. The word filled me with unanticipated comfort.

The t-shirts that declare 'Girls Rule the World' offer an empirical falsehood, but at least the aspiration is there.

Boys have always known they could do anything; all they had to do was look around at their presidents, religious leaders, professional athletes, at the statues that stand erect in big cities and small. Girls have always known they were allowed to feel anything - except anger.

The boy taught from infancy to be tough is emotionally doomed.

I don't think, in my entire 18 years as a student, I ever used an exclamation point in an academic paper.

I admit I feel funny when I use the word 'whom' as I'm talking to my diapered children, but I persist.

No longer is a geek identifiable by a pale complexion, black-rimmed glasses, a bowling shirt that says 'Nerd World Order.' No, geeks are everywhere. And they're cool!

Real love is more than a one-time, seemingly iron-clad pledge that we will never be apart. If you're over 20, you've probably figured out that meaningful love isn't constricting; it doesn't chain you to one place or to each other.