A young friend wrote me a sweet thank you note before she traveled back to school, “ Dear Patty, she wrote, I firmly believe that your hugs are the cure for cancer.” Recently, I flew to Oklahoma City for an important event. That day and the previous ones I had been putting in long hours to make up for that short vacation. I was tired, and as I sat on my spacious comfy seat, I had hoped for a pleasant flight so I could sleep on my way there. It was not to be. My seat companio

“What makes a virtuous and meaningful life?” Paul Kalanithi, asks in his last book, when as a neurosurgeon on the verge of completing his medical training he found himself dying at the age of thirty six, of stage IV lung cancer. As he poignantly chronicles in his book ‘When Breath Becomes Air,’ our lofty goals and plans lose meaning when all we wish for is one more day of perfect health in a body that is giving up on us. To say that I myself have lived my life obsessed with d