Personal Essays on family & work.
The Washington Post
I’m a pediatrician. I unexpectedly became a foster mom to a patient.
Making room for the unexpected can bring joy and meaning to our lives beyond anything we could have imagined.
The New York Times
Empty Nests Are Overrated
Becoming a foster parent involves inherent risks. But is it in the end the children who are really taking the bigger gamble?
Boston globe magazine
After the Crash
“Two kids were hit on Ferry Road.” So begins life on the other side of the stretcher; a world of drunk driving, brain injury and death, but ultimately also of endurance, hope and grace.
Poets & Writers
Going Back to Where It Was
Writing personal essays by necessity involves re-living old trauma and opening healed wounds. But it also allows for some measure of sovereignty over an unchangeable past.
The truth of memoir
conversations
Carolyn reflects on the transformative power of words. Her essays and books have at turns served as memory for her son, filling in gaps stolen by brain injury, ice-breaker for her family re-kindling conversations long gone cold, and therapy, helping her as a writer and mother to process her grief and heal her heart.
The Writer
Have Notebook, Will Travel
In the words of Henry James, “a good writer is one on whom nothing is lost.” Carolyn shares her penchant for capturing snippets of dialogue, ideas for stories, and interesting new words by carrying a notebook everywhere.
Chicken Soup for the Soul
Is there a Doctor in the Family?
Here Carolyn limns the fine balance between being a doctor and a family member and questions whether she is cherry-picking the scientific data when she nudges her mother-in-law toward a cancer treatment she initially declined.