Just in case you needed to hear this today, it’s okay to be selfish. Women, in particular, are conditioned to be givers, peacemakers, feather-smoothers, and people pleasers. Most, if not all of these expectations are based on the sentiment that it’s not good for women to be selfish, or that being selfish is bad. The messaging is so relentless and pervasive that it’s easy for the distinction between selfish and self care can be difficult to ascertain. Some random thoughts…..
There are so many entry points for me to talk about what International Women’s Day means to me. — As a former single mother on welfare, I could talk about the wage gap, inadequate child care resources, unequal opportunities at various places of work, the poverty trap built into the welfare system and the way it disincentivizes people from trying to better their circumstances. — As a woman who has experienced sexual harassment at work, in dating situations and while…..
This photo is from a trip I took to Portland in August 2019. The hand is that of my youngest daughter. She and I were out on a walk, exploring her neighborhood. I thought that today, we could use it as a writing prompt. One of my tricks for breaking through writer’s block is to imagine different worlds within the various pictures I see streaming by in my Instagram timeline. It helps me to shift gears when I’m stuck in…..
My mom died on January 27, 2020. Grief is a strange experience. Grief is also NOT linear. Even though she has been gone for three years, there are still memories of her that appear at random times, popping to the top of my consciousness like errant butterflies flitting across a garden full of flowers waving in the breeze. That’s her in the picture—the brunette nestled next to her dad. She was the elder of two “oops babies” that arrived when…..
What kind of cook are you? The “measure-y, by the book” sort or the stir, sniff and sample sort? For what it’s worth, I think that not only does each approach have merit, but there are certain times when it pays to err on the side of the extreme of either. When I was a little girl, I used to perch on a stool in my grandma’s kitchen and watch as she cooked dinner for us. My knees drawn up…..
The picture above is of me at approximately 29 years old. Two of my daughters are with me outside the daily newspaper where I worked—my oldest daughter is probably inside the building, chatting up the reporters in the newsroom. My youngest daughter recently posted it on her Instagram (she’s the baby in the picture). She is currently 29; her older sisters 30 and 34, respectively. What follows is a bit of introspection and work-in-progress exposition for my next book. I…..
The picture is of me and my younger brother at Thanksgiving in the early 1970s. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, we moved in with my grandmother after my mom and dad divorced. I had 24 cousins on my mom’s side, and so our Irish Catholic family usually had about 40 people gathered on the major holidays (our year revolved around the pivot points of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas). We had an Adult Table, populated by my aunts, uncles,…..
Pictured above is the V-Tech “laptop” that my oldest daughter used to bring with her when she’d join me at the newspaper while I was working on deadline. Trips to newspaper offices were part of her entire life, almost from the moment she was born. I pursued a journalism degree at a community college, beginning when she was four months old. My first role at the college newspaper was as a features writer. Two semesters later, I would serve as…..
Today is National Pumpkin Seed Day! In honor of this autumn treat, I thought I’d share a story and recipe about my days as a nonprofit founder. When I moved to Chicago, one of the first things I did was to alter my diet to a more plant-based variety. There were many reasons for my decision: • Vegetables and grains were less expensive than meat. As a founder who didn’t receive a salary for the nonprofit I established, cost was…..
When you factor in all of the social expectations of motherhood, types of motherhood, women who have lost children due to miscarriage or other reasons, and those women who do not wish to have children (and who are sometimes made to feel “less than” for that choice), Mother’s Day can represent an emotional series of land mines. In one of the first pictures taken of me at the hospital, you can see my mother: a 22-year-old woman, peering into a…..