Often, when a woman displays vulnerability, she’s liable to be labeled “weak.” If offended, she’s whining. We’ve connected her strength to stoicism in the face of what ails her. Oh, but don’t be TOO strong, or it becomes threatening. So many constraints, so little sense.
My grandmother always talked about her “ship coming in.” It would happen someday. She was certain. To support this belief, she enrolled in a local college after having 10 children and helping to raise several grandchildren, me and my younger brother included.
She was the oldest student in all her…
I think I’ve been love bombed. I think you have too. It’s so common that anyone who’s dated more than one or two people has likely endured the emotionally jolting experience. All we’ve done in recent years is give it a name.
Something about stumbling into this aura without expending energy to get there made it feel even more miraculous than usual. The effortlessness resounded joy in my heart. I knew that at that moment, if only at that moment, I’d arrived someplace sacred.
I loved someone I’d only just met, who…
I’ve been single for far more cumulative years of my womanhood than I’ve been in a relationship. Externally, I watched this relationship status evolve into a role. Amongst family and friends and even in dating, a few years ago it felt like my life became a monolithic sitcom: The Perpetual…
I remain one of the most aggressive beaters of the self-love drum. Self-love is the foundation for healthy relationships and any we try to build while it’s undeveloped will crumble. Self-love is the faucet from which all other love flows. I said that to say, sometimes we don’t let the…
I’ve tried.
I’ve tried to tell myself I’m going to sit still in love or contentment and wait out an egregious circumstance deemed a “rough patch” as it kills me. As it betrays everything I believe in and stand for. And when I tell myself I’m going to try and…
The bacon curled with slight sizzles on top of the heating vent as my brother and I waited impatiently for it to turn a darker pink. Dark enough for us to think it was done enough for our consumption. …
I decided that it didn’t matter what major I chose in college. It didn’t matter what I studied or that I obtained a degree at all, really. Because I was going to play professional basketball. That would be my career, traveling the world performing a sport I’d discovered I loved…
In the valley of my emotional intelligence, I left unmanned the front desk my superiors instructed me to manage without so much as a note addressing my whereabouts. There was no time. After reading a text message, I sprang from my seat and power walked to the building’s single-stall restroom…
