Estelle Erasmus

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Right after I delivered my gypsy-eyed daughter by emergency cesarean section, I remembered I needed to call the phone company over a mistake in the bill. Hopped up on pain medication and sobbing tears of frustration, I yelled at the customer service person "you can't do this to me. You are overcharging. It's not fair."
My husband heard my screaming from the hall, came into the room, and gently took the phone away. "I'm sorry, my wife just had a baby, and she's exhausted and worn dow...

Is your teen losing out because they don’t know how to act with adults? Teenagers who treat adults as casually as they do their friends can lose out on important job and social opportunities. Learning etiquette life skills can build confidence and help teens sail through in any situation.
Anne Chertoff, the COO of Beaumont Etiquette, teaches a popular teen etiquette course. This etiquette expert has tips on how teens can ace all of their adult interactions, whether it’s an interview for an in...

Industry experts and legitimate writing coaches provide advice on how to spot writing coach scams and shield yourself accordingly.
The profession of “writing coach” has come under recent scrutiny. The outcry follows a July 2018 article in the Los Angeles Times outing Anna March (also known as Nancy Kruse, Delaney Anderson and Nancy Lott) as a grifter, with financial judgments of more than $380,000 against her. March allegedly preyed on the dreams of unpublished writers by touting her services...

What is it about aging that makes women happier as they get older, especially between the ages of 50 to 70?
Recent research from Australia, which followed women for 20 years, attributes some of this to the fact that women received more “me” time as they got older.
And with that “me” time comes a lot of satisfactory revelations.
I spoke to 14 women in their 50s about what they would have done differently when they were younger — if they only knew, what they know now:
“I wished I’d worn sleevel...

In a recent episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, Kelly Dodd, who is divorcing her husband, cries to her daughter over her ex—her teen’s father—and her dating woes.
Big mistake.
“It’s never a good idea to turn your child into a confidant,” says Rosalind Sedacca, a divorce and co-parenting coach, and founder of The Child-Centered Divorce Network.
“As soon as an adult confides in their teen, you rob them of their childhood because you are putting them in an adult conversation that they a...

Parents of LGBTQ teens have difficulty discussing dating, sex and sex education with their kids (and may avoid the subject) according to a new study by Northwestern University. Why? Parents often don’t have any context for it, besides cis heterosexual sex.
Safe Sex Education for LGBTQ Teens
But that shouldn’t stop them from talking to their teens.“Parents play an important role in helping their children learn how to have healthy sexual relationships,” said Debra Hauser, President of Advocates...

1x per day
Stir 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger into a glass of water or have it as a tea daily to stave off a headache before it starts.
Don't Miss: How to Have Happier Dreams and Get a Good Night's Sleep
1240 AD
That’s when peppermint was first mentioned in European medical texts. Massaging your forehead and temples with its oil can help relieve tension pain by increasing circulation, according to research.
Also see: How to Get Back to Sleep After a Nightmare
When a headache hits hard, try th...

Rossellini shows us that there are new frontiers for women and new expansive definitions of beauty — and that we are not limited by age.
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Click here to launch the slideshow
Isabella Rossellini’s career choices have never been traditional: model, actress, TV reporter, costume designer, one-woman show, and now animal-rights activist. And why should they? Her parents were triple Oscar-winning Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini, the gl...

One caring community has rallied to create a summertime garden program for children who rely on school for regular healthy meals.
It’s a fact every parent knows: young children need proper nutrition to be able grow healthy bodies, focus at school, and thrive at life in general. But 15.3 million American kids suffer from “food insecurity,” which is simply the latest way of saying that they don’t have enough food on a regular, predictable basis. In short: these are kids who consistently don’t k...

I remember when I was graduating college in the mid 1980s, I worried that life, as I knew it was over, that I'd never be carefree again, and that my social life would end with the handing over of the diploma. Although I feared getting older I've actually found that now with many of my goals accomplished or in progress, I relish it. I always say I'm a late bloomer, but when I bloom, I bloom big.
Here's why:
I'm a Midlife Mom. I got married in my forties and had my daughter a few years later. S...

I joke to my friends that when my hubby and I fight it's like the Clash of the Titans. I think it's no secret that when two strong personalities get together they release a phalanx of emotions — resulting in conflict.
For my husband and I, bickering is like a sport. It's even a form of stress relief. And we both excel at it (probably because we practice on a daily basis). We could be Olympic medalists, although we'd probably argue about who rightfully won the gold. I am a stay-at-home-writer ...

When Grammy-winning singer Carrie Underwood opens her mouth, people pay attention and not just to her singing. What she says counts, too. Case in point: In a recent cover story for Redbook magazine, Underwood said that she and her husband Mike Fisher may have missed their ‘chance to have a big family’ and give her son, Isaiah Michael siblings, because she is 35. She therefore plans to explore her options, including adoption.
RELATED: Carrie Underwood's Comments on Having a Baby After the Age ...

How to avoid writing coaching scams

When my daughter was two, we took a short family cruise. Our last night on board, I packed up our luggage and left it in front of our door to be picked up. By the time I realized I had stashed away all her diapers in our oversized suitcase, they’d already collected it.
“I can’t sleep without my pull-ups,” my newly potty trained toddler cried.
“You’re able to hold it in during the day, honey, maybe you can do it in the night, too,” I said.
“I can’t,” she wailed.
With my daughter listening clos...