Mary McGrath is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including:Chicken Soup for the Soul (Jan. 2019), Newsweek, Wall St. Journal, Betterafter50.com, Purpleclover.com, LANG Newspaper Group, and Good Housekeeping, Please find her work at www.marymcgrathphotography.com
All of them gladly wrote me prescriptions, but when I looked at the side effects of the medications they advocated, they sounded worse then the maladies I was experiencing.
I showed my stylist a photo of what I’d like to look like. It seemed like a no-brainer, especially since she had owned two salons in a previous life.
As a writer, I’m always curious about these temporary terms, making me wonder why words seem to populate sentences for a while before they disappear.
We are now at the age that things are starting to happen to our friends and family, with the pace escalating as we get older.
Because of my father’s illness, having a job was something my mother always found to be extremely important.
What if women stopped coloring their hair? What if we forfeited manicures and pedicures, high heels and clothes that fit too tightly?
But poverty still sits in the corner of the room for me, and no matter what success I have attained, I have always feel like I am going to fall off a cliff and end up in the poorhouse once again.
Sally’s mind rolls backward to that fateful evening at 15, when her mother, diluting her sorrows with another round of gin, insisted her daughter needed to “try a little harder”.
I wasn’t dreaming. I was fully awake. Someone or something had settled beside me. This was the first time it had happened to me.
Diagnosing an ailment is like going on a scavenger hunt. You try and try, and if you’re lucky, you finally find what you’re looking for.