I keep a folder full of letters from readers who say that my words changed their lives. I might start to get complacent if not for my angry readers. Their aggrieved, insistent voices remind me that not everyone shares my take on things.

A friend is just back from spending several days with her sister. Why am I telling you this? Isn’t hanging out together just part of being sisters? Not for these two. They had barely spoken for 15 years. when my friend told me she was making this journey, she looked both resolute and anxious. Now she says her visit was “wonderful.” Her eyes glisten. She means “full of wonder.”

Friday, April 17, 2009 was to all intents and purposes the first day of spring: a day for sandals and pink nail polish; for skateboards and sidewalk cafes; for remembering to stock up on sunscreen and forgetting you had ever worn clodhopper boots, fil…

I’m thinking today of a preteen boy in Windsor, Ontario, the auto town just across the river from Detroit. I don’t even know his age, let alone his name, his favourite sports team, what kind of music excites him or whether he’s ever loved a dog. But I know something intimate about this boy. I know what he fears. When both his parents lost their jobs in the auto industry, he worried that they couldn’t afford to raise him. So he tried to take his life.

I remember when we hardly said a word about mental illness in the workplace. The business community lost talent, time and money because no one dared to face the truth. So when the Women’s Executive Network asked me to be the Patron Host of a May 4 luncheon in Toronto that will highlight the business case for grappling with mental illness, I was quick to say, “Count me in.”

I have been the jaded owner of every kitchen gadget that ever buzzed, flashed or inspired a slew of cookbooks. These gizmos have their uses but they all involve chopping and fussing. Besides, they won’t give you any comfort when you’ve just schlepped home from the airport at midnight with a suitcase full of laundry. For comfort, you need a toaster—100 years old this year and still the key to simple but soulful meals.

Suicides are all but invisible–except when they’re notorious. Nicholas Hughes, a marine biologist and outdoorsman who hanged himself last month, would have been the invisible kind if not for his mother: Sylvia Plath, as famous for killing herself as she is for her remarkable poems. Some say we’ve heard enough about the death of Nicholas Hughes. Writers Linda Gray Sexton and Jeremy Gavron, who also lost literary mothers to suicide, would beg to disagree.

When I wrote my first Chatelaine editorial on overcoming my chronic depression, a reader called to thank me. She was struggling with her own debilitating depression, yet she couldn’t bring herself to say the word, so great is the stigma that surrounds this treatable condition. I’ll be thinking of her on April 15, when I’ll be speaking in Saint John at the Canadian Mental Health Association’s third annual A Day in her Shoes fundraiser.