Of course we always got presents for our birthdays. My mom always tried very hard to get us what we wanted.

On my 15^th birthday she really surprised me though. I don’t remember the gift but I do remember that she picked me up from school that day and took to me to get a work permit.  And not only did she get me a work permit she also got me a job! Mom had arranged for me to work in our dentist office.

I found that I enjoyed working. The dentist employed mostly high school and college stu...

As a small child I suffered from migraines.  I would have tremendous head pain and could not move my head or open my eyes. 

My mom took to me a lot doctors and I even had my head x-rayed.  It was a strange thing to be so small and lie on a table with a huge machine moving above my head. 

It was finally decided that I was a nervous child and was given pills to calm me down.  I am not a therapist or psychiatrist so I don’t know what really caused my migraines.  The only thing I do know is...

The treatment for HPV was laser surgery, so Dr. Zuckerman performed the surgery in his office and I was instructed to come back in two weeks to see how I was doing.

Two weeks later I was healing and he said he needed to do another PAP test in 2 months to see if the laser surgery got it all.

Unfortunately the laser surgery did not get all the infection and I had to have what is known as a “cervical conization” which is invasive surgery done in a hospital. The pain was excruciating.  

M...

“Hold for Dr. Zuckerman” she said to me when I answered my phone at work one day. I recognized his nurse’s voice. I had gone for my routine annual exam and PAP test the previous week. I had been having gynecological care for 20 years and I had never had any issues.

Dr. Zuckerman came on the phone and said “Nance (he always called me “Nance”) we have a problem”. “Your pap test came back and you have HPV with condyloma and I need to do a biopsy.” I was stunned.

I had the b...

The next day after I was attacked I went to work as usual but emotionally I was a wreck. As I walked along Pearl Street to my office on Maiden Lane my friend Marty saw me and started excitedly calling my name.

As Marty got closer I could hear him “Nancy, Nancy I had a dream about you last night. I dreamt that you died.” As Marty came up to me the smile on his face evaporated and he said “What happened to your neck?”

My neck had welts and bruises from where my ex-husband had choked ...

I left him on December 28, 1991.

To this day I do not know who the Nancy was that left. I felt like I was in a movie.

He was not there. I saw someone packing a bag. I saw that person closing the door behind her, suitcase in hand. I went to my mother’s house.

When I arrived unannounced that Sunday evening, Mom opened the door and before she could say a word, I said, “Have I got a story for you”.

That week I did two things. First, I found myself an attorney. And next….I found a t...

Most people like it when the work day ends not me. I hated going home. I was afraid of how I would be greeted when I got in from work.

If I was lucky all he would do is yell at me for about an hour and then go out. If I was not so lucky he would stay home and yell, scream, hit me and terrorize me.

On the nights that he would yell for what seemed hours I would sit quietly on the corner of the couch with my knees bent and my arms around my legs and my head resting on my knees.

Some nights ...

I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t clean but I could dazzle my co-workers. I was the can do person. I could do that because work was where I was treated like an adult and with respect.

One of my responsibilities was to organize and manage to company conferences. In the insurance industry conferences are the way of bringing together the company’s top producers in one location to both reward and educate them.

Part of managing a conference was to prepare and ship all the conference materials ...

About a month after we were married I invited my youngest sister over for dinner one night. My youngest sister is 6 years younger than I am, so she was 13 years old.

I had spent the day cooking. I made my own tomato sauce; I made meatballs, a salad and had purchased a dessert. I was 19 and never really cooked and I thought I did a really good job and was feeling good about the meal I made.

I felt good until my ex-husband tasted the meal and promptly declared it disgusting and threw the ent...

I was married about 2 years and one night I went to the movies with my mom.  As we were standing on the movie line waiting to buy our tickets I said to my mom “Mom I’m Unhappy”.  And she then said “If you make your bed you lie in it.”

I know that my mom had endured her own unhappiness for years. She and my dad had not gotten along for many years; in fact they had not even shared the same bedroom for many years. It was a very sad, unhappy relationship and she suffered very much.

I ...

When I was a teenager I spent my summers on Orchard Beach in the Bronx. My mom and dad worked and we were old enough to take care of ourselves. So many days it was off to the beach. The cool section for teenagers was section 13 and I wanted to be in the cool section.

As I was standing on the beach boardwalk he walked by with a girl on each arm. As they say, he was tall, dark and handsome and I was impressed. Later he left the two girls behind and he approached me. He was in college and I wa...

Carry your cross, you make your bed you lie in it and don’t hang out your dirty laundry are the idioms I heard over and over again when I was growing. This is what I heard up when I tried to talk to my mother about being wronged.

In other words if I ever complained about something one of those idioms were given to me as the solution.  Did I know as a child what they meant? Nope, I could only make up my own definitions, so here goes…

Nancy’s definition for “Carry your Cross”.  Lif...