Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings
All those years, all that money, all that unrequited love. It began way back when I was a child, an anxiety-riddled 10-year-old who...
Daphne Merkin
Mother of All Surrogates
My attachment to the intricate, fiercely inconsistent woman who is my mother has always been shot through with ambivalence. It is as if...
Making My Therapist Laugh.
My career in therapy has been a long and varied one, spanning four decades and calling on different aspects of my presented self. One of...
My Mother was my greatest terror and my greatest love
ELLE Contributing EditorDaphne Merkin's new memoir, This Close to Happy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), explores her life, recurrent depression
A Summer Rental of One’s Own
The New York Times | July 7, 2010. THIS spring, in ripe midlife, after years of thinking and talking about it, I finally rented a summer...
My Virginia Woolf Doll
The New York Times | July 7, 2010. I have always been fascinated by the concept of the transitional object—that first possession, be it a...
Writings & Reviews