Blogs

A few years ago I had a small skin cancer removed, making me one of the nearly 5 million people treated for skin cancer every year in the United States. While it will never recur, no one wants to hear the word cancer. It's scary and unsettling. And now I have a history of skin cancer, putting me at increased risk for another one down the road. I wish I had known growing up what I know now about the sun's harmful rays.

"The pain got worse and worse. Eventually it was unbearable… Sex was impossible. I felt exhausted all the time. There were many times when I couldn't get out of bed."

Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from Everyday Health. The original post date was May 8, 2015. Read the original post.

May is clearly my month! Between Older Americans Month and National Women's Health Week, we get to focus on my kind of people: older women. As wise as my friends and I feel, we certainly agree that there are things we wish we had known when we were younger. Here are a just a few of them.

First, the good news. Teen births in the United States have declined dramatically in the last 20 years. Yet we still have the highest teen birth rate among developed nations, and in 2013 there were 273,105 births to teens 15–19 years old. Did you know that, as a parent, you have a strong impact on whether your teen makes healthy decisions? This includes decisions about sex.

Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from blog.aids.gov. The original post date was May 12, 2015. Read the original post.

Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from the OMH Blog for Health Equity. The original post date was May 14, 2015. Read the original post.

Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from womenshealthmag.com. The original post date was May 12, 2015. Read the original post.

Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from the Huffingtonpost.com. The original post date was May 11, 2015. Read the original post.

Mother's Day — you might wonder why a woman would cringe at that. Maybe she recently lost a child or suffered a miscarriage. Maybe she misses her mother. But often, it's because she's experiencing infertility. Mother's Day can be incredibly difficult for women experiencing infertility. Fifteen years after my own experience, my wishes on Mother's Day are to help women celebrate the day, not struggle through it.