Columns

It’s been a minute since I put my degree in counseling to good use. Let’s change that, shall we? Last week, I wrote about a recent ghost vacation. For those who didn’t read that column, here’s the gist: I came back from this year’s Cure SMA conference with a…

It’s not uncommon to plan for the future. Most of us have at least an idea of what we’d like our lives to look like five, 10, or 20 years from now. Some people even lay out detailed plans for how they intend to accomplish their goals regarding careers, marriage…

From my perspective, the typical path to becoming a journalist looks like this: First, you enter the formal education system and learn what you can from kindergarten till high school. Then, you try to figure out what you’re going to do with your life for the next several decades. You…

“Sometimes I pretend I’m dead.” This sounds like the lead-in to a particularly macabre joke. But in actuality, it’s a personal practice with the potential to revolutionize our approach to self-care. My friend Andrea Hannah calls it a “ghost vacation.” “Sometimes I pretend I’m dead,” Andrea likes to…

When you’re living with a complicated disease such as SMA, it’s half the battle to have a knowledgeable and trustworthy medical team helping to manage everything. I’ve always been fortunate in that respect. I know how difficult it is to build a solid medical team, but I’ve somehow collected…

As others set off fireworks on Independence Day, a Facebook post set off personal waterworks. It also determined the focus of this column. Credit angel intervention. *** Molly Grantham is an anchor for WBTV, a local TV news station two hours…

Three years into my collaboration with biotech company Genentech, and I still feel like a fish out of water. This is what professionals call impostor syndrome (IS), defined by Lexico as “the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a…

A single lyric keeps ringing in my head from Fletcher’s latest single, “Her Body Is Bible.” It goes, “Hold on tight, when the world gets hard, this s**t’s like paradise.” The song appears pretty straightforward at first blush. The lyrics and the imagery are simple, attempting to reclaim religious…

“You just gotta keep livin’, man. L-I-V-I-N.” Matthew McConaughey first delivered his iconic “Alright, alright, alright” catchphrase in the 1993 cult classic “Dazed and Confused.” Still, it’s his character’s other most quotable line in the film that is perhaps more poignant and philosophical. When McConaughey’s David Wooderson, the…

One day about 15 years ago, I was watching a funny show. It was lighthearted and entertaining, yet one comment made me think seriously. It still does. A person said, “I heard that computers were a fad!” Obviously, it was a joke. However, I thought to myself, “Where would I…