In the spirit of moving on, here are the things I’m looking forward to:

1. Pre-Wanderlust Craft Fair & Final Friday Event, May 31, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., 416 S. Commerce Street, Wichita. Come buy my stuff!

2. Riverfest Marketplace, June 8, 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Century II, Wichita. Come buy my stuff!

3. Tread on Trafficking. I’m raising money again this year, but I’m actually a couple weeks late in getting started. Help me out, and support some survivors of sex trafficking? Please?

Photos like this:

And this:

And this

So please visit my shop, buy whatever strikes your fancy, and tell all your friends about it. And if you live in Wichita let me know before you purchase something so I can take the shipping costs off for you.

In other thoughts, while waiting for the movie to begin my nephew was explaining some rule that exists in his house and how his mom said it was the rule so it was clearly the rule and clearly needed to be taken seriously. And I felt like responding, “Kid, your mom is just my big ... Read More »]]> I took my niece and nephew to see Oz The Great and Powerful last weekend. They loved it. (But they also chose watching Larry the Cable Guy’s Tooth Fairy 2 over getting donuts, so their judgment is suspect.) I did not love the movie, for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was that it didn’t seem to respect women. I was thinking about blogging my thoughts but I waited long enough and the internet did it for me. You should go read about it.

In other thoughts, while waiting for the movie to begin my nephew was explaining some rule that exists in his house and how his mom said it was the rule so it was clearly the rule and clearly needed to be taken seriously. And I felt like responding, “Kid, your mom is just my big sister, and she’s just making things up as she goes along. Also, nothing bad really happens if you don’t listen to her. Trust me.” But instead I just nodded. But dude, his mom is just my sister. And somehow she’s convinced three little kids to trust everything she says.

So one time this lady wrote a blog post (or maybe it’s just an excerpt from her book?) that said pretty much the same thing that I was trying to say in a recent blog post, but she said it better. I’m attributing most of the differences between our posts to our respective states of mind at the time each post was written. You see, I had recently been on Facebook and had read what proved to be that one-status-update-too-many status update in which ... Read More »]]> This post was written by me about 8 months ago but I wasn’t feeling the greatest at the time and never posted it. I’m posting it now because I still want to share, but at the same time I don’t feel like making it into a better post. And now that you’re super excited to read it…

So one time this lady wrote a blog post (or maybe it’s just an excerpt from her book?) that said pretty much the same thing that I was trying to say in a recent blog post, but she said it better. I’m attributing most of the differences between our posts to our respective states of mind at the time each post was written. You see, I had recently been on Facebook and had read what proved to be that one-status-update-too-many status update in which a grown, accomplished woman made fun of her body again. On Facebook. In front of her high school classmates, cousins that she really likes but never really talks to, and, most importantly, young girls who look up to her. So I took about five minutes, got some feelings off my chest, and posted my complaints. Conversely, I bet this writer put like, time and thought and stuff into her piece, and it shows!

Enough apologizing for my slapdash post. Here are some excerpts from the post you should really go read*:

Meanwhile, the culture that tells women our primary value is in our physical bodies is older than dirt. Centuries and centuries old. So it’s not like it just went poof as soon as we got The Pill. It’s all still in us … it just went underground, and its best protection lies in the fact that we don’t want to cop to it. We don’t want to think that way anymore. But we still kinda do.

How do I know this? I use my eyes! To look around! And I see children with descriptors like “hot” and “juicy” emblazoned on their butts. Young women taking part in a sad, unfulfilling hookup culture even though it doesn’t seem at all fun. More and more completely fine-looking people opting to cut into their flesh in a mad grasp at perfection that generally falls grotesquely short.

All of this is fueled by a strange mixture of narcissism and self-hatred, forged by a media culture whose inherent message is You are what you look like. Before we even know what’s going on, we learn to disembody our perspectives. We start looking at ourselves from the outside in. We begin to evaluate ourselves based on how we think others will respond.

And this, which is the second time in a couple of weeks that I’ve seen a woman make this kind of comment, and which probably deserves a post of its own by someone who can analyze it much better than I can:

I remember being 7 or 8 years old and wondering why no one had tried to molest me yet. Was it because I was fat? My tiny brain toiled to figure it out. I didn’t even know what molesting WAS, but I already knew that my body was supposed to elicit some kind of reaction in other people — that’s what it was FOR — and if that didn’t happen, there must be something wrong with it. And me.

And this:

We don’t WANT to be like this, and we certainly don’t want to pass it on to our kids. And yet, we do.

Why? Because we’ve been infiltrated. The patriarchy is coming from inside our heads.

For instance: one afternoon not too long ago, I was hanging out with my friend and her super adorable, totally nommable sweet little baby, who was maybe 6 weeks old. We got a little wistful, as ladies sometimes will when small babies are present, and my friend began to share her hopes for the little one’s future. Happiness … fulfillment … the chance to figure out what she wants and the courage to go get it. All good stuff.

And then: “I know one thing for sure … I’m never going to let her get fat.”

And, oh! My heart, how it shattered! Not only for the wee one, but also for her mom, and for all of us. Because, sweet merciful Jesus, this world has made us ALL SO EFFING CRAZY!!

I had good parents who didn’t emphasize my appearance while I was growing up but some of this stuff still infiltrated my brains because, as stated above, “the patriarchy is coming from inside our heads.” And it’s infiltrating the brains of my nieces and my friends’ precious little girls, even though they all have good parents who are also trying to keep this from their little brains. My first instinct is to take all those little girls (and their brothers too, because this stuff messes them up as well) and move to a hippie commune where they’ll never have to learn about reality TV stars or plastic surgery or Cosmopolitan magazine. But I guess that’s maybe not feasible? At least I’m assuming it’s not feasible since I ran into obstacles about four seconds into planning my little utopia.

I think maybe we just all need to try our best to not be crazy about body/appearance issues so that eventually this thinking will have just withered away from neglect. Yes? Yes. So say we all, etc.

Let me ask you this: 40 years from now, when you and I are rad old ladies cruising around the solar system in extravagant glowy caftans, do you want to hear girls asking Does this jetpack make me look fat? I swear to Mars, I will f****** lose it. I will flip over a table and terrify everyone with my freakish oldster strength. Hold me back!

Enough is enough! I want better for the girls of the future! I want them to live in the clear light of glorious, radiant sanity. To be free to do what they want, unencumbered by the craziness of the past. To experience their bodies as nothing more or less than what they truly are: mind-blowingly cool vehicles for creating and drinking up awesomeness in this world.

*WARNING: Contains adult language

Dear Man in the Elevator,

I know this apology is a few weeks overdue but, unlike the rules for thank you notes that my mother drilled into me, I’m not sure on the proper timeline for an apology blog post. But I’m pretty sure that approximately two months is a little long to go without apologizing. So I guess I’m apologizing for two ... Read More »]]> Several months ago I was feeling pretty depressed. I was tired, irritable, unsociable. And I had an experience that I thought kind of encapsulated how I was feeling and could provide some insight into a depressed person’s mind. A couple of months after that experience I started writing a blog post, with a cute framing device, to try to share my epiphany with the five very special people who read my blog. This was the start of my post:

Dear Man in the Elevator,

I know this apology is a few weeks overdue but, unlike the rules for thank you notes that my mother drilled into me, I’m not sure on the proper timeline for an apology blog post. But I’m pretty sure that approximately two months is a little long to go without apologizing. So I guess I’m apologizing for two things: the thing I’m apologizing for and for taking so long to apologize. Oh, and a third: for apologizing in a blog post you’ll never read. Anyway, on to the apology!

But I was depressed so I never finished the blog post, and now I’m not as fond of the cute framing device. So here’s a quick synopsis of my experience with the man in the elevator and an explanation for you non-depressed people:

I was in the elevator in the building I work in, playing a game on my phone (probably 10,000,000, which is a really good game). At some point another person, some guy I didn’t know, got on the elevator as well. Usually I put my phone away when someone else gets on the elevator. I do this in part because I don’t want others to think I’m one of those people who can’t ride in an elevator for five minutes without playing games on her phone, but mostly because it feels kind of rude to stay on my phone when someone else is around, even if I’m not going to interact with the other person in any meaningful way. But that day I was feeling especially tired, irritable, and unsociable, so I didn’t put my phone away. In fact, I didn’t even look up at the other person to give the little half-smile greeting strangers give each other in these situations. I just kept staring at my phone, ignoring the fact that the other person even existed. I just didn’t have the energy to interact with another human being at that moment, even if it was only by giving them a half-smile.

And for some reason, I’m sure completely unrelated to the game I was playing on my phone, an image of myself as a videogame character with a little power bar above me popped into my head. I started that day with a certain amount of life in my little power bar, and bad drivers and work and coworkers and my inner dialogue had slowly drained life out of my power bar. Giving that person in the elevator even a half-smile would’ve taken even more life out of my power bar. And if that half-smile had turned into a discussion on the weather? More life gone. And I just couldn’t risk that life. I still had half a day of work and interpersonal interactions to go, and I needed all the life I could get.

We all walk around with little imaginary power bars above our heads, and our interactions and activities can deplete or add to the life in our bars. When you’re feeling depressed your bar starts with a little less life in it and every interaction and activity takes a bigger chunk of your life than it would when you’re feeling more like yourself. And when you’re feeling depressed, it’s hard to find things to put back some of that life. It’s a tiring, frustrating situation.

And that’s my weak attempt at illustrating for you why depression is so hard.