Michele Shapiro

It started as souvenir shopping, but Michele Shapiro realized that each piece reveals something different about her life and who she was at the time.

I wanted my daughter to get ahead, so I steered her away from minimum-wage work. Now I regret that choice.

I quit online shopping for 30 days. It tested my willpower, challenged my spending habits and revealed ways to cut back on spending.

I spent nearly two decades trying to lose and maintain weight. When my husband dropped 60 pounds on a GLP-1, it didn’t just change his body — it threw our entire relationship off balance.

When the job went, so did the daily banter, the inside jokes, and the people who knew what Wednesday's soup was. It’s the small, daily connections that turn out to be hardest to rebuild.

If being told to relax makes you tense up, you aren't alone. Learn why our stress response stays on alert and how to train your body to downshift.

Instead of tapping my smartphone, shopping online or swiping a card, I spent January paying for everything with cash. It taught me surprising lessons.

A short essay about my first time being offered a seat on the subway at rush hour, and how it made me feel.

An essay about the dog my daughter wanted, but I needed.

My entire four-day, three-night stay at Amansara, which translates to “heavenly peace,” was filled with magical moments.

As a longtime New York City resident, I am used to ambling from Point A to Point B rather than taking public transportation whenever time permits. But I learned within a few hours of touching down in Bangkok that it is not a walking city.

During a romantic vacation in Savannah, Ga., one couple not only falls in love with the city, but rekindles their own romance.

A few years ago when I was trying to broaden my client base to include some travel publications, an editor I met at an event offered to let me write for her—for free. Since I was planning to attend a press trip to Colorado the following week and had

In Zumba class today, it dawned on me: I'm far from the best in the class. In fact, when I see myself trying to physically mimic the instructor's tricky hip-contorting moves and shimmying my shoulders in the mirror, I'm always surprised that my body

Today marks my two-week anniversary as a freelance writer and editor. For the third time.

I started work on the book I'm ghostwriting just after Mother's Day this year, but sometimes I feel as if it has been since before my daughter was born 16 years ago! To turn a 60,000-word manuscript around in less than a year is a MAJOR challenge.

I love a good revise. When I worked in consumer magazines, I used to pride myself on revamping a meh piece of writing into something compelling, original, and relevant.

It's hard enough to find your own voice, let alone someone else's. But that's just what I've had to do in the eight-plus months that I've been trying to inhabit the mind of an author while ghostwriting my first health-and-wellness book.

Today marks my official one-year anniversary as a freelance writer, editor and content marketing consultant. In those 365 days, I've challenged and questioned myself and my abilities, reconnected with former colleagues and opened myself to new