It was the summer of the birds. In late June, my two kids and I took the ferry from Seattle to a small, remote patch of land in the San Juan Islands, where our family’s A-frame cabin sits on an empty stretch of beach. Late winter and spring had been warmer than usual, and many eggs had hatched early. The day we arrived, we found a swallow’s nest in the center of an inner tube on the deck. Raven fledglings ...
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After I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer at 31, I spent a lot of time with my doctor, discussing my ongoing care. The unspoken (and sometimes spoken) words hung in the air: If I live that long….
That’s because no one thought I’d ever make it to 32, let alone 43. During treatment for the disease that should have killed me, I ...
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A few months ago I heard an interview on NPR with Nancy L Segal, the author of Someone Else’s Twin: The True Story of Babies Switched at Birth. The book told the tale of three babies and what happened when one singleton newborn was accidently switched with an identical twin. The “twins” were raised as fraternal and no one knew about the mix-up until they were adults.
It’s a complicated story and in the interview there was a lot of discussion ...
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