reframing femininity
Hairy kneecaps. The first time my body became “my body”—a thing separate from me—was at 6thgrade lunch period when Valerie Warner informed me Pete Harris would never date me because I had hairy kneecaps. She’d asked him about me, and his answer, given in the presence of the other 7thgrade boys, had been, according to…
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I grew up never liking my name. It wasn’t that my name was anything unusual or difficult to pronounce. I was just never fond of it. I remember sitting in school as my teachers would “call roll” imagining that my name would have been one of my fellow classmates. When you have a three syllable…
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“I don’t need you, MOM! I don’t need you!” I hear this screamed by a large, fit, and well-dressed man. He is a study in contradiction. He has a large pack which suggests to me that he could be homeless. He is huge, more than six feet tall. He appears mentally ill. He is screaming…
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As a child, a dark closet was the safest ground to play with my dolls. My mother was not a cruel woman, but she didn’t play, nor did she give room for anything other than work. She grew up in the aftermath of the Great Depression with a mother who gave two of her children…
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The word “instigate” means “to bring about, as by incitement or urging; to urge on to some drastic or inadvisable action.” Sounds sinister, doesn’t it?
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“Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.” ~ Rumi
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My daughter-in-law called me the other day and said, “Please talk to Isabelle (my almost 5 year old granddaughter). She’s freaking out because she’s not a baby anymore.”
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Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel entitled: You Can’t Go Home Again. Indeed, you can. It was our 45th high school reunion and, as usual, I had to encourage my husband to go.
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As a young girl growing up, it was always clear that there was something different about Sundays.
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At the age of four I was brimming with excitement as I thought about the rapid approach of my first dance performance.
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