GOOD GIRL GO GO GO!

I now know fer sure - the journey through my 50's required a full tank… a full tank of Courage, straight from the heart, my very own heart, mon coeur. The only way to fill that tank was to tap into the full energy of my inner Leo, that quiet lion waiting within me. Want to read more

Don't take your good health for granted. Tune in to you and tune in to Doctor Go! to learn new ways to approach baffling health problems and how to prevent them in the first place. It’s free advice and it’s all Good. Go on Good Girl, Get to Know Doctor Go! 

Good Girl GoGoGo has teamed up with Mark C. Pettus M.D., FACP, ABHM - Director Medical Education, Wellness, and Population Health at Berkshire Health Systems - to bring you valuable information, "News to Use" on your journey to wellness. He’s got some eye-opening, science-based tips to help us get to know ourselves a whole lot better...read more

My baby daughter Olivia died. Stillborn on the day she was to be born. For years, I walked around as though carrying a heavily weighted sandwich board over my shoulders advertising “I’m the mother whose perfect baby just died” on the front of it and “I’m the mother whose perfect baby just died” on the back of it …a silent, endless cry as Grief’s mantle followed me wherever I was headed and whenever I looked back. For years, this is how I defined myself. but not any more...

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The New York City I revisited after actively avoiding it for nearly twenty years was a kinder, gentler Gotham than I ever knew when I lived and breathed it in my early thirties. Was this rekindled flame and regained fondness for The Big Apple down to the change in me, the change in the city, or being around Kristin every Thursday and Friday in September? The answer is: all of the above. Read More...

Here we are in the land of buttery croissants, tantalizing Rosé, excruciatingly gorgeous cheeses and yet we are detoxing. Ohlala. What the heck are we thinking?! Our friends give us crooked looks. They have 'non' respect for this sort of behavior and don’t hide their dismay: You are too American.Relax, be happy. What’s a little sugar?You are on holiday, yes?  Read more

For years, Dan Harris has delivered news stories as a respected ABC News anchor. Now, he’s delivering a new story – his own. Dan is a gifted story-teller. He’s in one of the toughest, ratings-driven professions on the planet where there is very little room for error and being “perfect” in the public eye goes with the territory. How ironic then that his first book, 10% Happier, exposes his imperfections. With humor and an authenticity that we don’t often see, he succeeds without preaching to teach us about Meditation. Read More...

The thought of a 5:30am workout doesn’t make everyone jump for joy, but really, it should. Deep within us all is a call to wake with the sun and go to sleep with it, too, but that primal rhythm has been buried under layers of modern patterns and choices that rob us of our “get up and go, go, go!” 

After a month of sub-zero, pre-dawn, sixty minute cardio-excursions with Tricia McCormack, I’m thinking that her TK-Fit program is THE BEST wake-up call I've had in a long, long time. Whatever we might think about layering up like the Michelin Man and starting our cars in negative degrees below zero before the sun has even winked at us, there is something beautifully counter-intuitive about a pre-dawn workout...read more...

The glorious season of fresh farm food hit the ground running in early May and I was excited to help my friend’s mother, Adrienne Metcalf, at Peace Haven Farm in Becket, MA. I couldn't wait to get ‘up there’ and away from it all for three days.  I arrived and spilled out of my car and into Mother Nature’s lap. 

Adrienne and I had never met before and as she came over to greet me, I anxiously explained, ”I…I had to bring my dog…she’s…she’s not doing too well…” In an instant, I was in floods of tears.  Over the past months, I have been watching my much loved dog journey between Last Rights and miraculous bounce backs. At the same time, I am witnessing my mother recede into the mist of Alzheimer’s. Both form a complex, painful juxtaposition.  Read more...

Most friendships start with a common interest or a shared passion, but my friendship with Laura Collins Downing started with Desperation: I needed to fit into a dress.  I was barely eating yet getting larger and larger. I did not know what was happening to me, but I was NOT going to settle for “it’s an age thing.”   

I know a million gorgeous, strong and radiant women in their 50’s.  Just because a woman is close to 50 doesn't mean she is doomed to a life of misery and Mom Jeans.  Read more...

Neat and tidy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

This thought has been orbiting around my brain for a while now…for years. Ever since a dear friend laughed at me for ironing dish towels, my husband’s boxers, and just about anything with a wrinkle in it, I’ve been thinking about the wrinkles. Life’s wrinkles.

Can I live with them or not? The short answer is: yes, yes, I can. Read More

My close friends know that I had been sick for many years and struggled to find the reason for my constant sorrow and never-ending physical pain.  Unraveling my symptoms was complicated. It could have been a million things, and I didn't know where to start...so I just had to start some where. It was a slow and agonizing process as I began to pick things apart. There were no start and finish lines and the check list was long, with each tick-box scarier than the last – Depression? Allergies? Auto-immune - Lyme or Lupus? Cancer? Adrenal? Thyroid? Neurological? Pre-Menopausal? You get the idea.  read more

I’m still not sure why there is so much fuss and fear attached to turning fifty.  I accept that we’re closer to the end of our lives and maybe we’re just inching towards our last “fu**able day,” something Amy Schumer learns a bit about from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette but truth is, why focus on that when there's plenty more life to live?...read more...

A lot can happen in a split second. One moment Life is a straight line and then, BAMMO! It’s not.  

What happens in the crash of a moment shapes us for who we are to become later in life. Oftentimes, it changes us so profoundly, that we learn to look at our losses and setbacks as blessings.

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F I N D I N G  Y O U R  N O R T H  S T A R  is just as much about losing it.  and the path you must follow to reclaim it, where with every step - an intake of breath and its release - you will find that you are moving... moving the shadows to clear the pathways, your rhythm and your focus, to push away distractions and to make way for clarity and light to fill spaces long lost and forgotten and desperate for air... [read more]

I love writing. I especially love writing letters.  I love searching for and finding an understanding of another person, where once there was none.  I love looking at life from all angles, at the three sides of every coin...

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Spring has sprung. It's time to dig yourself out of winter's cozy darkness. As part of the seasonal shift and effective Self-Care, point yourself in the right direction. Spring is THE time to stretch and open up. Our bodies, our lungs, our brains are all receiving seasonal triggers to "WAKE UP!"  Go outside and smell those flowers!   Read More

There are many hard-working parents, families, professionals and caregivers attending to an ever-increasing number of children with Autism. Autism is not just ‘someone else’s problem’. As numbers grow it is relevant to us all. At some point, Autism will touch your family and your community. Read More

It’s so easy to look at a beautiful young woman, particularly a fashion model in her twenties and think – “wow, she’s really got it all going on” -- but for former fashion model, Amy Huebner, her strength and beauty just weren’t enough to make a beautiful woman a healthy one, too. Like many women in their twenties, Amy’s diet was the “Protest-Poverty-and-Pasta Diet” prevalent among college students and young professionals, who in protest choose not to eat meat but out of poverty are not able to find affordable, healthy substitutes and end up boiling pasta or suffering innumerable blind dates…a girl’s gotta’ eat, right? Wrong. It’s no way to live... and for Amy it was a sure way to die. Read More ...

This is Part 1 of a two-part story. Before I can write about my next inspiring Good Girl – fitness instructor and health coach, Laura Collins Downing - I first need to explain why it took years to find my way to her. I’ve written about my fibromyalgia in previous blog entries but I haven’t really explained what I needed to work through and how I worked through it. Eventually, after three years, the pain is under control but there was A LOT of trial and error before I learned what works best for me. 

What is fibromyalgia? The definition below pretty much sums it up, though in my mind, it neglects to include the drama, misery, sorrow and despair that go hand in hand with fibromyalgia. Plus, it doesn't say anything about its relationship to chronic inflammation. Prolonged inflammation can lead to all sorts of health problems including cancer so it’s important to get things under control before they spin too far out of control. Read More

THE BENEFITS OF BREATH - HOW YOUR BREATH IMPACTS YOUR BIOLOGY. This course teaches Breath-Work as a means to increase awareness of our breath and to manage and “yoke” our respiratory capabilities so that we may optimize the health benefits of every inhale and exhale we take.  The Breath-Work practice encourages the creation of new pathways to replace old habits in order to make room for new, more vibrant ways of navigating our lives and spiritual needs. UNLEASH THE POWER OF CONSCIOUS BREATHING Through Movement, Theory and Stillness at White Gate Farm - East Lyme CT May 5-7, 2017 read more ...

I haven't always eaten kale. In fact, I rarely ate my greens. Admitting that sounds like a confession. It wasn't until I was so desperate to feel better that I was willing to try anything new, but I still had my doubts...I wasn't yet convinced that changing my diet really could change my life. [How ridiculously unenlightened could I be?] 

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What if the scariest thing in your life – the thing you feared most – turned out to be the most peaceful, beautiful thing you never imagined possible? Read More

Masks perform many roles and allow us to transition in and out of “boxes,” moments of time populated by different people, different roles, different expectations and different outcomes. Masks can hold us back just as easily as they propel us forward. They enable us to express ourselves just as much as they help others open up to us. We all wear masks every day of our lives, but not the kind Huck makes... read more

It’s an early morning here in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts and after an unusually long winter, we’re finally emerging, shedding layers, de-frosting our minds and bodies and staying in sync with the bulbs that are, at long last, pushing up all around us. It just feels right that the long-absent sun and its warmth should be lifting up over the hills as I am typing a story about Dawn Lane, as though it’s the name of a street heading somewhere bright, shiny and warm. I smile and think to myself: true to her name, Dawn Lane knows how to bring people to a bright place.  Read more

Who says the younger generation is clueless? Whether it’s Elvis, the Beatles, Woodstock, Hippies, Yuppies, Generations X and Y, “Millennials,” “Noughties” or Hipsters, the younger generation will always be the same…young.

I laughed when I wrote that because now that I am “old,” it’s a pretty neat thing to find inspiration from “kids.” I first met Caroline Wilkerson when her big sister, Lizzie, couldn't babysit. There’s one word for her: adorable. There’s nothing quite like a healthy, happy, positive and polite teenager, let alone two [three, counting Lizzie] because the same holds true for Caroline’s BFF and next-door-neighbor-for-life, Grace Ellrodt.  Read more...

Get Engaged Not Enraged. What pulls us apart has the potential to bring us together. [read more...]

Writing did not come naturally to me. It took years and loads of practice before I was any good at it. I lacked a key ingredient - the confidence to express myself, to let my words go and allow them to find their own way. Ironically, I would never be writing for myself were it not for some things I learned from work, not school. For the purposes of this blog hop, I’d like to share a few writing tricks I learned from some very clever bosses on a corporate playing field where writing is anything but personal...Read More

Coffee marks the start of my day. The first spark occurs when the dark roast slips from the tilted cup and hits my palette, mmmm, Zing-Kabooom! Like electricity to Frankenstein, my day has begun…

Imagine my excitement about working at Dottie’s Coffee Lounge, where I would shadow my friend and its proprietress, Jessica Lamb, for three days.   I couldn’t wait for that special, dreamy, creamy Dottie’s latte concoction, but the truth is, I really just wanted to hang with Jess, who has been a role model for me ever since I first met her.

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When Bridget Ford Hughes emerged in 2008 from four years of breast cancer treatment and a double mastectomy before she got the “All Clear,” the first thing she did was to get married and celebrate Life and Love and the tremendous support she received from her husband and close friends.

The second thing she did was to set forth on yet another journey... 

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Yesterday was Day 30. I did it. I cut caffeine out of my life for 30 days. Now that I am still living and breathing at Day 31 [imagine that!?], you might be wondering if I've had a cup of coffee yet...but before I answer that, I've got to get this off my chest - the thought of a 30 Day Caffeine Detox was once a complete nightmare for me, but now it's a dream come true...yes, folks, I did my Linda Blair and turned my head around. Read more ...