We plan our futures with our partners, but we examine our present with our friends. I was tired, exhausted, and still getting over a cold when my partner dropped me off at the airport a few weeks ago. Not for the first time, I thought maybe I should skip this trip. As much as I […]
Little girls aren’t taught to be brave, leading to fully-grown women having dreams far bigger than their sense of agency can execute. You’ve seen Nymphomaniac, right? Art cinema is slow in arriving to the small Colombian mountain town where I live, but even I have managed to (start) watching Volume 1 of Lars von Trier’s […]
This originally appeared on Of Sugar-Baited Words. Republished here with permission. We’ve all been programmed to believe that self-loathing is the norm, so self-acceptance must be a lie. New words and concepts are being coined all the time. Last year was the year of the “selfie,” and I can barely remember a time before “Google” was […]
Navigating the real world in your 20′s is hard enough. Try doing it as an alcoholic. If you or a loved one has ever attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, you are likely to have heard some variation of this slogan, “If you hang around a barber shop long enough, eventually you’re gonna get a haircut.” […]
Do not tell them that everything happens for a reason, or that you can’t imagine what they’re going through. And whatever you do, do not tell them they’re running out of time. We have all found ourselves in situations in which something traumatic is revealed, and we have no idea what to say. Sometimes people […]
This originally appeared on The Daily Life. Republished here with permission. Last night my partner’s family emailed me to see if we were coming to a birthday event. “Why are they emailing me?” I asked. “Because you’ll remember and get organized, whereas they know I’ll just forget,” he said. It’s not just birthdays—I’m the go-to […]
Because I’m a bigger girl who regularly exercises, seeing a skinny girl struggle gives me a small thrill. But just as fat doesn’t necessarily mean unhealthy, skinny doesn’t mean healthy. And every body deserves respect. Confession: Sometimes, when I see skinny girls struggling with exercise, I gloat. I’m not proud of it, but I can’t […]
This originally appeared on The Daily Life. Republished here with permission. Carl Jung said that the people we react to most strongly actually embody a quality about ourselves we don’t like. We’ve all got a nemesis somewhere. It might be one person, it might be a group of people—just being in the same room with […]
