And when comfort is what we want, one of the most powerful tonics alternative medicine offers is the word ‘natural.’ This word implies a medicine untroubled by human limitations, contrived wholly by nature or God...

I was only going to stay six months. I stayed three years, and I never stopped thinking about leaving. But when I left, I left my entire life behind. I have to explain to you...

When I stepped onto the bridge over the Iowa River and stood looking out across the water, I knew I was home. I was wrong about that, as it turns out. And I know now...

In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested — citing most often the offence of impossible proportions — that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be...

If by years of patient suffering, God can manage to take the harshness out of my voice, then the time has been well-spent.

I felt sick with hatred then for my own people. If you had asked me why I hated them, I might have said that I hated them for being so loud and for being so...

I know you’re on my side,” an immunologist once remarked to me as we discussed the politics of vaccination. I did not agree with him, but only because I was uncomfortable with both sides, as...

Eat me,” I was told by another. They had opposite effects – I grew and shrank, I believed and did not believe. I cried and then found myself swimming in my own own tears.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear...

Fear is isolating for those that fear. And I have come to believe that fear is a cruelty to those who are feared.