Other Stuff

Melissa writes essays about topics other than sports, children, women or girls – and those essays live here. She wrote "Cushioning My Landing" upon reaching a life-changing juncture and wanting to reflect on a key piece of advice that her father gave her when she was hired at Sports Illustrated in her early 20s. She listened and her father's hints that she followed led her make unorthodox decisions later in her life. Writing became her expression of gratitude to this person who'd by then passed away. Her feelings of emotional vulnerability during the 2016 Presidential campaign inspired her to write the essay "Feeling Unhinged: Discovering I’m Not Alone." In an essay published by Cognoscenti, a publishing platform of a Boston public radio station, she ruminated on the sudden, early death of a friend in "Robbed Of A Next Time: Lessons Learned From Loss." 

At Last, a Mother!, Wellesley magazine

The phone call I'd been waiting for arrives on a spring morning. "Melissa, we know who your baby is going to be," says Lillian Zhang, a woman who directs China Adoption with Love ...

Cushioning My Landing, Medium

It's the clanging machine I remember most, as though hundreds of fingers were typing in unison. I was at my bank, about two blocks from the mid Manhattan Time Life building where I worked as a reporter ...T

Robbed Of A Next Time: Lessons Learned From Loss, WBUR Cognoscenti

On a bluff overlooking Nantucket Sound, I'm standing with others to say goodbye to my friend, a goodby to last the ages. From girlhood into our 20-something lives, a thread cross-stitched her life and mine. ...