Recovering and reframing

Recovery from lumbar spinal fusion to fix a collapsed disc on the heels of breast cancer surgery and radiation and at the beginning of hormone therapy 0/10 – don’t recommend, very difficult. The support of remarkable family, friends, co-workers, and health care providers during this journey (especially on this #CancerSurvivorsDay my mom Amy Hughes, a stage 3 breast cancer survivor herself for 27 years) 10/10 priceless.

Health issues like this are humbling, and to paraphrase Zoe Neale Hurston, there are periods in your life that ask questions and periods that answer. This one has a lot of questions. In December, looking down the barrel of what was coming, I decided that my word of 2025 would be “reframe.” I was thinking of my late father, who was a perennial optimist. He always saw the best in every situation, and tried to get me, often an anxious overthinker, to see it too. I’ll drop in another quote (Hemingway): “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

Strengthening the broken place is hard; recovery is two steps forward and one step back and full of frustrations. But, to reframe: I was able to support the interfaith nutrition network (INN, one of my parents’ favorite charities); the Port Washington Public Library, where I’m on FOL – The Friends of the Port Washington Public Library board and various local causes – all in sneakers and measured movements and more rest than I would like.

I spent my birthday in the hospital, and appreciate all of the birthday wishes – a very belated thank you for those. And of course thanks to my adorable little nieces (and their parents) who make it easier to keep the smiles in the frame and who keep me young. I am facing 48 with a (literal) spine of steel!

Supreme Court Avoids Narrowing Section 230

In a recent client alert at Dentons, my colleagues and I explored two recent Supreme Court cases about whether Twitter and Google are liable for third-party content on their sites under the much-debated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2023/june/12/supreme-court-avoids-narrowing-section-230?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=vuture

Doctor Who, Jill Biden?

Update: I wrote the below in May 2013 in response to a National Review article. The issue is ripe again with a December 11, 2020 op-ed in the WSJ, making mostly the same argument, complete with calling Dr. Biden kiddo. Sexist tropes are very slow to die.

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Doctor Who? No, not Dr. Who.

“Doctor Who?” is what the National Review Online asks about Dr. Jill Biden, wife of the Vice President.

Apparently, that well-regarded think-tank takes issue with such insistence upon a professional distinction. In the article entitled, “Diagnosing Dr. Biden: The second lady exemplifies a bloated class of people with irrelevant, unimpressive titles,” we’re told that, “Dr. Biden isn’t a physician, of course. She has a doctorate – in ‘educational leadership,’ whatever the hell that is.”

Biting wit, to be sure. Continue reading Doctor Who, Jill Biden?

The Family Affair

(Published in the journal at the Ice Theatre of New York 2019 Gala honoring John and Amy Hughes)

On the rink we had for one season in our backyard in 1990 – before Taylor was born.

“Do you all skate?” It is a question I get a lot as the oldest Hughes sibling. Put simply, we do – starting from my Canadian father right on down to the sixth and youngest sibling.

Continue reading The Family Affair

The Meaning of “Mother”

I know it’s Mother’s Day but I wanted to share this picture of my kids and their father because he does so much of what we see often think of as “mothering” – the care and feeding of others. In his case, it’s the lion’s share of the childcare, as it evolved from infant and toddler care to adolescent care and (the hardest) teenage care, all of the cooking and the laundry and most of the errands. I know he is not the only one.
Continue reading The Meaning of “Mother”