Estelle Erasmus

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...

My daughter C is six and a half years old. When I look at her, sometimes I see myself, and sometimes I see my husband. She possesses both my ability to be a social butterfly and his stoic nature. And like us, she’s intense.
When she was born to me, in midlife, after a bout of age-related infertility, I was thrilled to have my parents living nearby (my husband’s parents lived in Australia). My mom and dad visited us often. Back in those days, I felt isolated, lonely and clueless. Most of my fr...

“We must attract members who are younger and more diverse. Otherwise, we risk extinction.”
So wrote Randy Dotinga, the outgoing two-term board president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), in his post-mortem “Exit Report: A Better ASJA, But More to Do.” Appropriately, the story ran in the latest issue of ASJA Magazine—the organization’s print publication that was upgraded during his watch.
Faced with an aging membership, the venerable institution is dealing with nothing...

I was pregnant, in my third trimester after several years of trying. And while I was ecstatic at my good fortune, my body was less than pleased. I fought nausea 12 hours a day and it only stopped when the heartburn kicked in.
Then the night terrors started. In between crying jags, anxiety, sadness and a feeling of impending doom, nobody — including me — realized that I was dealing with antepartum depression. Actually, according to the American Congress of Obsetricians and Gynecologists, betwe...

Excerpted from Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox, edited by Joanne C. Bamberger (SheWrites Press, November 2015). The following chapter was written by Estelle Erasmus (@EstelleSErasmus).
For the majority of her professional and political career, Hillary Rodham Clinton has rejected the purely feminine role, and she’s paid a steep political price for it.
When asked during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign about her life, she famously replied, to much derision, “I suppose I cou...

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.
Parenting Teenagers Through Divorce
“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 ...

Estelle Erasmus was thrilled to welcome a baby in her 40s. But ever since, she’s been out of step with both her peers and mothers of her daughter’s friends.
I’ll never forget my first failed attempt at friendship with another new mom.
Desperate for companionship, I had joined the JCC in my town, for a Mommy and Me class with my three-month-old daughter. I loved the wry wit of Felicia, a brunette former New Yorker, who mimicked the overzealous instructor (“Mommy, watch your baby rolling—high f...

As you get older, you gain perspective from the rearview mirror of your life.
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 we...

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.
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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...

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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 Afte...

Imagine a diet where you can’t eat more than four grams of protein per day. That’s equivalent to a slice of bread.
Many of us in pursuit of wellness (or weight loss) have tried a restricted eating plan at some point, be it the Mediterranean, South Beach, or Cabbage Soup diet.
We give up sweets, carbs, and sometimes solid food, and it works — for a while. Then eventually we blow it on a slice of cheesecake or a slab of home-cooked lasagna.
But what if you had to go on a diet from birth and cou...

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...

I’m in the process of doing some at-home-ad hoc empirical studies with my daughter, which I will report back to you in a later column. In the meantime, I asked a few savvy women what is the most educational thing they did for their children, and found that the research supports the best choices we can make for our kids.
Reading is Fundamental: "The one most educational thing I do with my boys is make reading a way of life," says Tiffany. "Statistics constantly show that young male’s have lowe...

In this interview, screenwriter Michael Zam offers screenwriting tips for beginners and veterans, and discusses his success with the Emmy award-winning FX series Feud: Bette and Joan, starring Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Stanley Tucci and more.
Michael Zam, is an award-winner screenwriter, and popular film instructor at New York University. He also teaches theater studies in London. Zam and his writing partner, Jaffe Cohen, wrote and sold a screenplay that became Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Bette ...

Before leaving on a recent family ski vacation to Stowe, Vermont, where we stayed at the Green Mountain Inn and skied at Stowe Mountain, we headed to our local REI store (become a member and get great deals). From socks to coats, we bought everything we needed as a family to stay toasty but still look terrific whether we were on the slopes, snowmobiling, or sleigh riding. Check out this video on what to buy before a ski trips, then read on for some ski fashion tips.
Ski Fashion Tips
Bright is...