Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.

The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.

I'd say that while it's normal to long for an apology, if you really need it, you're not ready to speak to whoever harmed you. Non-apologizers tend to walk on a tightrope of defensiveness above a huge canyon of low self-esteem - they just can't listen to anything that's going to set them off balance. So focus on what you say for your own sake, because you need to hear your own voice telling the truth.

Feeling inadequate is an occupational hazard of motherhood.

We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.

Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships.

The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing.