In honor of Mental Health Awareness Week, we are re-posting this. And sending out our wishes for safe weathering of all storms, inner and outer. You stay alive you stupid asshole […]
Depression is (Still) a Trip
Growing up With a Mentally Ill Mother and the Stigma It Should Not Entail
As I listen to the commentary and interviews in broadcast media and read op-ed pieces about the recent stabbings and shootings, I struggle to accept the truth: there but for some sort of grace goes my family. We could have been chasing after my mother on a paranoid spree of violence. We could any day be the victims of someone else’s unstable loved one. So could you. How do we face such a threat? How do we diffuse the ill, who are so often victims themselves.
For the Revolution!
Because screaming at Trump on a TV screen at the gym while pedaling an elliptical machine wasn’t helping, I got in my car and drove 628 miles to Lexington, Kentucky, to attend […]
Cat-Assisted Meditation
Meditation teachers will tell you to find a room and shut your animals out before you sit down to meditate. Too much distraction, they say. You should concentrate on yourself, they say. […]
I’m Allergic to Being Allergic
Bananas that have even one brown spot? Off limits. Nothing that has started to ferment goes into my mouth. Wine is fermented, I say. “Yeah. You’re not drinking any wine. Or beer. Or any alcohol of any type except for potato vodka,” which was something I had never heard of, and neither have most bartenders in the world, I have since found out. “Also no chocolate, and I might as well tell you right now, no bacon, either.” You have to have a lot of guts to tell a woman she can’t have wine, chocolate, or bacon, all in one breath. Turns out this woman is ex-Navy. That explains it. Good thing she didn’t mention the prohibition of tequila right then, because I am an ex Navy wife and we might have had a throw-down.
Sad farewell to a beautiful soul and a wondrous voice—The Gloria Sirens honor Ilyse Kusnetz
by Susan Lilley The work of some poets is so intertwined with their authentic presence in the world that we can only marvel at the way their truth comes at us like […]
Foster Dogs, Parasites, and Marriage Don’t Mix
Fostering a dog can be scary. When you welcome the dog, you also welcome the tiny creatures stowed away inside, warriors in a Trojan Horse. Rescue dogs are often so stressed and malnourished that their immune […]
Sexual Abuse, Misogyny, and Donald Trump: “Women, you have to treat ’em like shit.”
Ignoring the voices of women perpetuates rape culture. But the latest news about Donald Trump isn’t being reported, except in The Huffington Post by Lisa Bloom, an attorney and a legal analyst for NBC News and AVVO. Bloom reports that a federal lawsuit has been filed against Donald Trump by a Jane Doe, alleging he raped her in 1994 when she was just 13 years old. (This, by the way, isn’t the first time Donald Trump has been accused of rape, Ms. Bloom reports in detail.)
How Can We Get There?
I recently got back from vacation (see my last post!) and one of my friends, as friends will, asked how I was readjusting to being home. I said, “On vacation, every day […]
Anglophile For Life
Yes, my friends, I went to England this summer. I went during July, when the temperatures in Memphis were sweltering in the humid 90s. I went with my husband, who is English, […]
The Gloria Sirens 