Roberta Gately

Christmas.  Even the name carries a hint of magic as it twirls through my thoughts stirring up wonderfully evocative memories of enchanting, never to be forgotten moments.   I remember, as though it was yesterday, a snowy Christmas eve, my weary dad trying to shoo us to bed, his finger to his lips, whispering “Shh, can…

I am an accidental author.  Though I’ve been reading since forever, and writing since I was seven years old, I’d never thought of myself as a writer. I am a nurse and an aid worker, and it wasn’t until I began writing articles, which chronicled the stories of my aid work, for a nursing journal…

  In just a few days, my third book will be released. Much of the pre-release flash of activity—marketing, publicity, the rush for blurbs—is all-consuming but somehow familiar. The rush for reviews and mentions is a necessary part of the process. I do, after all, selfishly want you to buy my book, review it, recommend…

Last year, I became one of the estimated 1,685,210 new cases of cancer to be diagnosed in 2016. Of that number, one out of three was projected to die from the disease.  While the diagnosis and statistics are daunting at best, for me cancer became a lesson in how to live like I was dying,…

It’s that time of year again. And, though the very word — Christmas — carries a hint of magic as it twirls through our thoughts, stirring up wonderfully evocative memories of enchanting, never to be forgotten moments, it is also a time of short tempers, long lines, great expectations and, greater still, disappointments. The real…

 In the icy grip of this all too frigid winter, I’d planned write about the miserably long, snowy weeks that stretch ahead, and how, like so many others, I am sick of shoveling the white stuff.  It’s lost its allure for me. It no longer represents a scene of hushed beauty, instead all I see…

Malala Yousafzhai’s autobiography was released this week, an especially fitting time ahead of Friday’s UN International Day of the Girl Child.   Nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Malala is the teenage Pakistani activist known for her courageous determination to attend school. Last year, a group of Taliban brutes stormed her school bus and, after…

Women have changed the world, often one tiny step at a time, and our selection of those women who’ve had the most influence often varies with the years and with our own experiences. Twenty-five years ago, we might have chosen Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana or maybe even Mary Tyler Moore, but our choices today would…

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve loved words. I love the sounds, the way a word can slip from my tongue like cool water thru a stream or the jagged way it might flow like rocks along a riverbed. I love the way a single word can change a story or a…