Recently the poet Annie Finch posted on her blog a piece called “Things I’ve Been Ashamed to Share About Being a Writer Until Now,” in which she gets specific about what men […]
Starting the Conversation: Speaking Out About Sexual Abuse
What HuffPo didn’t want you to read: “A Tape Doesn’t Change a Goddamn Thing” by Karrie Higgins
Last week, Karrie Higgins (whose work we’ve highlighted before) published an essay so controversial, the Huffington Post took it down and deleted her contributor account within hours of it going live. Higgins’ essay, originally titled “Donald Trump confessed to sexual assault on tape and so did my brother, and here is what I know: a tape doesn’t change a goddamned thing,” is a devastating and necessary account of the reality so many women face regarding sexual assault, why it is under reported, and why so may male assailants roam free.
Why Won’t She Leave Him?
Don’t tell her what to do; talk to her and listen. Offer your help, but understand that to leave or not to leave is her decision. Respect it. And tell her you respect her.
Acknowledge the pain and turmoil she is in, most especially the emotional turmoil. If she doesn’t leave him, don’t give up on her leaving him. Give her love, respect, support, and time. It’s going to take all of that.
Meditation for Skeptics
A standard message for motivational speakers and writers of self-help books is to promise that, if you do what the book suggests, you will have success. Often there’s an element of magic […]
An Open Letter To Donald Trump From Some Angry Women.
Originally posted on Drifting Through:
Dear Mr. Trump… can I call you Mr. Trump? Is that ok? I want you to be happy, that’s very important to me. Before I get started,…
Depression is (Still) a Trip
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 […]
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.
The Gloria Sirens 