“Love and abuse cannot coexist.” – bell hooks. It’s been over a year since I first read bell hook’s masterful treatise on love, All About Love: New Visions. The book called to and was answered by changes stirring in my heart, little epiphanies cracking the surface of my reality, and it was the catalyst for…
I made chocolate chip oatmeal pecan cookies and have been eating them with breakfast and coffee almost every morning this week for a midmorning snack. I have zero compunction about doing so ever since I made chocolate chip cookies for my French hosts when I was there in high school, and they ate them for…
I’m pretty passionate about women needing to embrace their own sexuality without shame and without regard to male sexual desire, and today I’m over at The Friendly Atheist to review Dannah Gresh and Dr. Juli Slattery’s book Pulling Back the Shades, their Christian response to 50 Shades of Grey. This [is] a pervasive problem in Christian relationship books…
Isn’t the American dream autonomy over self in the face of the man, getting a little privacy and a little power — just enough to live well and in peace? I’m not much of one for American idealism, but this bit has always resonated. We like the freedom to do was we please so long…
For the last year, I’ve been sleeping on couches, borrowed mattresses, and at last, my own thin IKEA futon thrown down on the floor. I have lived out of a suitcase since last August. This last week I spent wound tight, my attention turned so intensely inward that I left threads hanging to tangle in…
On Friday, as many of you may have learned by now, the YA internet world blew up, and this article by Ruth Graham is why. Here’s the crux of her argument: …a whopping 28 percent of all YA sales—are between ages 30 and 44. That’s my demographic, which might be why I wasn’t surprised to hear this…
I’ve been pretty busy elsewhere this week, but I wanted to drop you a line here to keep you updated on goings-on. Mostly I’ve been doing a lot of writing. And procrastinating by cooking soup and creating salads and new takes on mac & cheese. A few things to share with you, though. The first is:…
My mom went to college in Ilsa Vista. We heard stories of how beautiful Santa Barbara was all through our growing up. The town is a romantic part of our family mythology. Yesterday’s shooting didn’t leave me as shaken as it should have, like other shooting that happened have. Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Aurora. Those…
I think the biggest confusion in this whole my-sister-is-a-viral-blogger-after-her-first-post thing (besides the part where everyone is assuming her surname is Ettinger — it isn’t, and she’s a minor. So, my parents have requested anyone using her real name please redact it for her privacy), was about why Clare cared about the modesty guidelines more than getting kicked…