I don’t do Valentine’s sex. I don’t do birthday sex. Sometimes I don’t even do anniversary sex.
I don’t give my body as a gift. I don’t give my body as consolation. I don’t give my body as apology. I don’t give my body as “thank you”. I don’t give my body as “leave me alone”. I don’t give my body as “you’ve waited long enough”. [Read more…]
First came the anger.I needed to let myself feel the anger because for years anger had lived in me coated with guilt and shame. The old anger was wrapped in the feeling that I actually shouldn’t be upset, that I had no good reason to be angry.
But I deserved the anger without the guilt. “Let me have this anger,” I thought. “No one rush me to good feelings of reconciliation. You will not take this anger from me.” [Read more…]
See me at fourteen years old. I monitored every single bite of food that passed into my mouth. I ran my hands along my stomach to see how it felt to be one bite bigger. Each bite of food felt like a threat. At the end of the meal, I would turn sideways in the mirror to assess the damages. How much my hip bones protruded from my body and how much my belly caved in determined how I felt about myself. It made me feel sick to see what food did to me. Sometimes I panicked seeing my belly with a meal of food in it. Eating felt like a big mistake. [Read more…]
I thought I needed to wait until you died to say this. Not that I wanted you to die. I didn’t. But I thought about the things I could do once you did, as if my words could not live while you did, as if they couldn’t breathe the same air.
Just wait until you can’t hurt anyone, I thought. Don’t destroy the relationship. Maybe it could change. Maybe he will understand you some day and love you how you need. [Read more…]
I imagine God telling me these words. And I enter the wilderness.
Two things happened the day I realized I did not love myself. I sat tall in my vessel in yoga class, motivational words pouring into me. “How you treat your body says a lot about how you feel about yourself. Listen to what you tell yourself in yoga class.” [Read more…]
We found her on a Mississippi country road.
Her story began the same way as many country dogs’: one of a litter born of free-range, roaming mutts.
My fiance and I were driving back to town from the place where we would soon be married when I saw a scrappy, red-skinned creature in the middle of the road. We passed by it, and I turned around to try to discern what kind of life form it was. [Read more…]
