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2 weeks ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
When she was in high school, Susan Dominus’ brother Andrew “bullied” her—her choice of verb—into starting a school newspaper. Today she is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times. In her spare time, she teaches journalism at Yale. You know, no biggie.
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1 month ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
It has been said—note the passive voice—that the five biggest stressors in life are 1) the death of a family member; 2) divorce or relational rupture; 3) major illness or injury; 4) losing one’s job; and 5) moving. Like some of you, I’ve experienced all of these, sometimes a couple of them simultaneously. In fact, a few times these adverse life events fell one on top of the other in groups of threes or fours: a veritable stress cascade which, in turn, put my body at greater risk for disease.
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1 month ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
I’ve spent the past two weeks packing up my apartment into boxes for a big move—more on that in my next missive—but in the meantime, I have some wild and wholly unexpected news. I am as surprised as you are to announce that this publication—which I write on my couch, in my bed, and in my favorite IKEA chair—was just nominated for a ! I first learned of this honor in the bowels of Kleinfeld’s, where I was accompanying my daughter for her final wedding dress fitting before she graduates med school.
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1 month ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
If I told you how many hours my daughter and I each spent searching every corner of the internet for the right “vibe” of tablecloth over these past several months, you might wonder, as she recently did, why bother? Why bother to care about whether or not we add a runner to a tablescape in a hellscape?
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1 month ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
Two years ago, a male urologist told me to take a weekly bleach bath to prevent recurring UTIs, plus a daily Macrobid. Then he slut shamed me. My new urologist, Dr. Alexa Meyer, winced when I told her this story. “Yeah, no. Bleach and the vulva, just no.” Never mind that I’d already built up antibiotic resistance to Macrobid. “I’m really sorry you were treated that way.” (Caring female urologists like Dr. Meyer, I should note, are hard to find. Even in New York. Especially considering only are female.
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2 months ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
Today is my 59th birthday. In honor of making it this far—and given my vast experience with wrong turns, health challenges, plain old stupidity, and bad luck—here are a few lessons I’ve finally learned. The hard way. So you don’t have to:Your gut knows, even if you don’t. When a longterm partner was cheating, my gut could feel it deep inside, even if my rational brain had no evidence of infidelity or reason to believe anything was amiss.
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2 months ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
Back in 2017, I wrote an Op-Ed for The Washington Post about the humiliations and absurdity of having to acquire my ex-husband’s signed and notarized permission to reclaim my birth name in the middle of our extended divorce. If you, like me, cancelled your subscription to the Post when Bezos stuck his nose up our president’s ass1, here is the key paragraph from that essay, and I’ll reprint it in full at the end of this story, should you be in the mood to read the whole thing.
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2 months ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
Welcome to America, circa 2025, where up is down, a dozen eggs cost $10 (well, okay, $9.99 yesterday at the store near me), and a measles outbreak is in full swing thanks to the ignorance, ineptitude, and science denial of our current administration.
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2 months ago | 
deborahcopaken.substack.com | Deborah Copaken
On February 15, 2025, while our president, vice president, and their henchmen were busy dismantling democracy and 80 years of friendship between the U.S. and our European allies, I was on France’s northern coast, spreading my best friend Marion’s ashes under a mimosa tree and into various sunlit nooks and crannies on the grounds around her mother’s house. (She loved the sun.
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Feb 15, 2025 | 
stirthepot.substack.com | Michelle Albanes-Davis |Deborah Copaken
Hiiiii. I wanted to remind you that I’ve extended the Stir the Pot 20% off yearly subscription sale until the end of the year if you want to join in. It makes a great gift or you can keep that goodness all to yourself. Ok, now back to business. I’ve been in a slump for a while now. It’s tempting to blame it on the holidays, my impending 40th birthday, or the thousands of things wrong in politics, culture, and the environment right now. But even that’s not quite right. I’m just sort of… sad?
