Catherine Gigante-Brown

8. Educate, don’t fixate.

Food can be more than nourishing; it can be healing.

We’ve pieced ourselves back together in a patchwork quilt of ragged emotions. The aftermath of 9/11 wasn’t easy for us, yet it was much easier than for some. People standing 50 feet away from Peter didn’t come home that night; he did.

The Daily News quoted one painted lady as saying, “People come up to us sometimes and say what we do is disgusting,” she said. “But what is disgusting about the female body? They shield their kids sometimes, and I think, ‘Kids come from the female body.’”

Wrinkles or lifelines? Chunky or curvaceous? The choice is yours.

I left Cuba in 1949, when I was 11 years old. Back then, I didn't understand why my mother sent me away. I still don't.

I know it’s not a politically correct one, but I’ve got a confession to make: earth-friendly hotels stink. There, I said it.

In the photograph, my great-grandmother, Margarita Cirigliano, is sitting at a small table on the front porch of the family home in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

I saw my present mother-in-law in a whole new light the first time she held my newborn son.

Instead of categorizing people as different colors, I proposed we might begin to think of each other as Earthtones—because our skin colors are based on hues from the earth. Just as the planet is made up of a myriad of shades, it’s still one cohesive entity. We can be thought of as one entity also.