Conversation Starters

I had a dream that I was in a doctor's office where one of my male friends was giving medically safe abortions.  For some reason, he had invited me to come hang out while was working and so I was in the room with these women as they came in for their procedures.  I have a very squeamish empathy that kicks in with anything that could be even remotely painful but in the dream, I did my best to put on a brave face and stay there to help ease these women through their procedures being administered by my friend.  He is not a medical profession IRL but he was more than competent in this dream-space and did an excellent job making these women feel comfortable, clearly explaining what he was doing while also idly chit-chatting with me. I woke up thinking  what a weird dream . That was the morning of Friday, June 24, 2022.  Roe vs Wade was overturned mere hours after my waking. Friday, June 24, 2022 is a frightening and grotesque day in the United States of America. I le...

 co-authored by E. Clayton, Z. Raglow-Defranco, and S. Wolf Introduction The New York Radical Women’s (NYRW) group catalyzed the second wave of feminism. Only existing from around 1967 to 1969, their use of consciousness-raising and the media helped to encourage hundreds of women to join the feminist movement (Dow, 2014). The atmosphere that motivated the NYRW to form was one where many radical movements, including anti-war, civil rights, and several others were gaining traction within the United States (Library, 2011). The NYRW founders wanted women’s oppression to be addressed alongside the other reforms and wanted women to have larger roles in the civil rights and anti-war movements. New York City at the time had a diverse population of around 7,800,000 people and was rapidly growing in size (City, 2001).  The NYRW’s group wanted to address the issue that women were not taken seriously in political or socioeconomic spheres because of their oppressed social status. To addres...

I've pulled a few things from social media that I thought could inspire different posts, but as I stare at them off to the side here, my brain wants to call them pieces of the same puzzle.   The first one is this: Then there's this: Finally, there's this: That last one is obviously from a Timehop of mine -- a quote from an episode of  This American Life  that bangs like a drum through my healing process:  Sometimes we're not ready to let go of the lie that preservers our existence .  Yes, Ira Glass.  Yes, sir. But that sentiment ties back to the notion of the first meme I shared:  so many broken children in adult bodies .  For where else do we learn that we're less-than besides our childhoods? Where else do these patterns get established and engrained?  Where else are we told more that  we are resilient  than in our childhoods?  Kids just bounce back.  They're too young to understand.  What we say or do now will ...