A healthcare nightmare.

Strangers want their past relationships witnessed, and other strangers come to Zagreb to witness them.

My husband’s struggle with postpartum depression was my struggle, too.

In the normal universe, "to be" is annihilated by "not to be." But for reasons that are still a mystery to even the deepest math of physics, a bit of matter in a billion or so is not obliterated, it has no antimatter partner. It becomes a drop of experience.

An argument for trying.

The author recalls his time as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

How we became suckers for the hard labor of self-optimization.

Everyone wants women to be mindful, calm, and deliberate. But sometimes a little chaos gets things done.

On a transition and its aftermath.

On motherhood, writing, and the death of a friend.

The writer on his father’s religious devotion to personal style. Among the maxims: “the turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear”; “there is nothing like a fresh burn”; and “always wear white to the face.”

It was a place where you could, whatever you needed could to look like, for so many folks who’d been told they could not.

A grandmother’s tale of the night her first love had to leave town.

Christianity formed my deepest instincts, and I have been walking away from it for half my life.

On life in New York with an impossible neighbor named Jared.

On losing your mom.

On the curious life of Archibald Butt, confidant to President Taft and tragic victim of the sinking Titanic.

As much as the narrative of Butt’s heroism meant to the family, to the White House, to the military, it seems all too cinematic. The reality is that the experience was probably a great annoyance to him, right up until the moment it became a nightmare.

How Trumpism operates on the knowledge that some people can get away with anything, and how it offers a false promise to extend that privilege to white kids everywhere

You learn to believe in your child’s existence. What happens when she’s killed by a piece of your daily environment?

“I had inherited a Rolodex full of useful phone numbers (the College Board, a helpful counselor in the UCLA admissions office), but the number I kept handing out was that of a family therapist.”

On JFK and the 1960 Democratic National Convention.

On medical acting and real pain.

They call me the Greeter. I sell shoes at the Boca Raton Town Center mall — bedazzled stilettos and platforms, neon-strapped pumps saved for special occasions. I stand by the entrance of the store, heels dug into the carpet, tummy tucked in, and I greet people. Hi, how are you, sunshine? Have you seen our shoes today?

An essay on why fear may be the only thing that saves humanity from climate change.

On the grief that comes with losing livestock.