CN: pregnancy, childbirth, medical trauma, medical complications
I wrote for Flare about how we really need to take the phrase “worth it” out of the conversation when it comes to having kids. Please note that I specifically used non-gendered language in this piece, since people of all genders experience pregnancy and childbirth. I would really appreciate if you used non-gendered language in your comments (unless you are specifically referring to yourself and your experiences, i.e. “when I became a mother,” in which case it’s totally fine - just no blanket statements about women and mothers please).
Tweet from @markpopham reads:
17TH CENTURY YOUTH: ahhh I love looking at a painting where a lady has her boob out. i feel great and will live forever
ARTIST: but look closer…in the corner…
...YOUTH: wait is that…A SKULL? OH SHIT! I JUST REMEMBERED I’LL DIE ONE DAY!
ARTIST: Ahahahaha owned
The Belle Jar shared CollegeHumor's video.
Well, this is realer than I wish it was
Are you sure you don't secretly APPRECIATE being leered and hissed at by an evil horrific sex monster?
CN: cults, murder, poisoning, spoilers, tough titties
Wild, Wild Country gave me a lot of complicated feelings about Ma Anand Sheela! Luckily, Flare gave me the opportunity to sort through them here. Also please use this space as a chance to talk about Wild, Wild Country and what a petty little bitch the Bhagwan was.
The Belle Jar shared NowThis's video.
11-year-old Naomi Wadler has more poise and power than most adults you’ve ever met #MarchForOurLives
The Belle Jar shared Obsessed by BuzzFeed's video.
BUZZFEED UNDERSTANDS HE QUALITY CONTENT I NEED IN MY LIFE
"The word daddy is for Jeff Goldblum and him alone" / Thor: Ragnarok http://bzfd.it/2FGd3Ac
Maybe you need this poem today, this first day of spring
Transcription:
Instructions on Not Giving Up...
Ada Limón, 1976
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
I wrote a piece for the latest issue of Guts Magazine about depressions and plants and learning to be gentle
"I didn’t want to grow roses, though. I wanted to grow something useful, an extension of my burning desire to be something useful in the world. The further I sank into depression, the more I obsessed over my inability to be productive. I told everyone I saw about how spectacularly unproductive I was. At night I wept to my husband about how I’d done nothing all day, and... during the day I sent rambling, inscrutable texts to my mother about what a failure I was. Lingering over coffee with friends, I would feel my eyes welling up with tears as I described all the things I wasn’t getting done: I wasn’t working, I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t even able to read anymore. But if I could grow useful things—well! That would be something, at least."
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THIS IS MY NEW FAVOURITE THING
For International Women's Day, the New York Times is running obituaries of groundbreaking women who they had previously never bothered to write or publish. I cried the whole way through, but it was more than worth it. Women are incredible.
I am SO EXCITED that FLARE let me write about A Wrinkle In Time for International Women’s Day
“All girls deserve to be able to see themselves represented. All girls deserve a world that believes they have unlimited potential. All girls deserve the chance to be their wonderful selves. All girls deserve their own version of Meg Murry. And that’s exactly what International Women’s Day should be providing.”
TW: sexual assault
“In the wake of Weinstein reporting, much has been made of the phenomena of “whisper networks,” informal chains of secondhand and sometimes firsthand information about sexual harassers or rapists in a community or industry. Whisper networks, writes journalist Moira Donegan, are a “long-standing partial remedy” in response to pervasive sexual harassment and assault. These are “informal alliances that pass on open secrets and warn women away from serial assaulters,” warnings that circulate privately among tightly knit cliques. Whisper networks aren’t burn books for amusing women or getting men fired. In a world where sexual assault isn’t taken seriously, a whisper network becomes a form of protection.”
