Weddings were created to celebrate married love. In the age of Botox and liposuction, they’re becoming celebrations of physical perfection. No wrinkles, yellowed teeth or flat chests allowed.

My new beauty role model is well into her 60s, and neither lifted nor Botoxed. She has given up stilettos, sheath dresses, eyeliner and a husband. When I’m having a bad face day, she reminds me what beauty really is: the artless confidence that comes with letting go of whatever constricts a woman’s best self.

I’ve read enough hand-wringing news reports about pre-teen girls giving blow jobs and dressing like hookers. The usual suspects (academics and therapists) keep telling me the same old story. I wanted to hear from a real expert: a young woman who has lived it and has the guts to tell the truth. Now along comes Kerry Cohen, author of the brave and eye-opening Loose Girl: a Memoir of Promiscuity.

The beauty of working at home, according to the popular notion, has something to do with the dress code: you can get down to business in your bathrobe (or nothing at all). The downside, I’ve learned the hard way, is that it’s just too easy to find yourself working all the time. That’s why I now go out every morning to a funky rented office around the corner.

Here’s another sign that the media are at last portraying the mentally ill as fully rounded people you might know and love. On the New York Times web site, you can watch men and women with bipolar disorder speak frankly and powerfully about their incurable but treatable condition. And they’re using their real names, too.

Last fall my sister Joyce and I shared the truth of our tangled, sometimes crazy-making, never less than loving relationship in MORE magazine. Heartfelt comments have been coming our way ever since. If you missed our essays, here’s where to find them online, plus the next chapter of the story.

I’ve always enjoyed connecting face-to-face with readers, and my next gig promises to be the most rewarding yet. I’ll be joining Giller Prize winners Vincent Lam and David Adams Richards when Read for the Cure comes to Oakville on October 15.

July used to be vacation time, when my city cleared out and I felt like the queen of the sidewalk. Now swarming crowds tell me people are staying home in the new era of soaring gas prices and stripped-down flight schedules. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Traveling less will challenge us all to seek other kinds of adventures, creatively, socially and intellectually.

I never guessed I’d become dependent on sleeping pills, but night after night of tossing and turning made a desperate woman of me. Now it’s time to start getting through the night without the insomniac’s little helper. So I’ve just started a course of sleep behaviour therapy.

Canada’s Governor General, Michaelle Jean, has always struck me as a woman of vision and courage, the kind of pathfinder you’d want your daughter to become. Her quiet resolve was in the spotlight when she presented Dr. Henry Morgentaler with the Order of Canada. Now she’s facing a tidal wave of anger from pro-lifers while polls show most Canadians are on her side. I’ve been silent until now myself. But that’s going to change right now. It’s time she heard from the rest of us.

When Dr. Henry Morgentaler received the Order of Canada for his unstinting, often life-threatening efforts to make abortion safe, legal and accessible, I thought he deserved the honour. Yet I couldn’t rejoice; it would have felt like clapping at a funeral. I had no words to frame my conflicted thoughts until I watched a brave, remorseless movie about illegal abortion in Romania’s darkest days.

Once I owned my idea of the perfect summer dress. It brought out my freewheeling side, and I wore it until it fell apart. When I spotted an identical dress on a young sales clerk, I wanted to rip it off her in a moment of extreme fashion lust.