Almost a year after separating from my partner, we had a second breakup. Our first breakup, though incredibly painful, was what I can only describe now as tender. After trying to surmount the difficulty of a nearly ten-year age difference, our romantic relationship ended upon the realization that I was not yet ready to "settle down" and wanted more time to explore life as … [Read more...]
Self Love Isn’t Easy: 10 Difficult Things I Do To Practice Radical Self Love
Self-love is crucial for surviving and thriving in an oppressive society hellbent on making us feel like we’re wrong or not enough. But precisely because of this society, cultivating self-love can be difficult. As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety, I know how much energy it can take just to get through the day. When you’re stuck treading water, self-love can … [Read more...]
Why I’m Wary of Being Friends With You When None of Your Friends Are Marginalized
One day I was grappling with shame and self-consciousness over my tendency to take stock of the kinds of people new people in my life surround themselves with. I was thinking about this in relation to bodies and, specifically, race and fatness. Until that moment I had internalized this behavior as unnecessary, judgmental, and even shallow. But I had a realization that allowed … [Read more...]
3 Uncomfortable Questions You Should Rethink Asking
No query is universally benign. Some questions shouldn’t be asked of a particular person; others shouldn’t be posed at a certain time. Under more circumstances than you might think, innocently intended inquiries can feel like interrogations, even when proffered without malice. In other words, there are no innocent questions. I hope we can all extend grace to one another in … [Read more...]
What I Learned From Never Experiencing “Romantic” Love
When I was very young, I had the same dreams and expectations that many girls of my 1950s generation in my social class had: that I would start dating in high school, go to college and eventually meet “the love of my life,” fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have what I always thought of as romantic love in my life, … [Read more...]
How To Unwrap Yourself From a Toxic Relationship When the Person Is Gone — But Not the Pain
It has been almost two years since I ended my last long-term relationship. It seems so strange that we have now been apart longer than we were together. When it began, I thought I had finally found my person. I soon experienced anxiety and doubt after many red flags started to surface. I had longed to love and share my life with someone and I settled for a toxic relationship … [Read more...]
El Amor Romantico Nos Mata: Quien Cuida De Nosotros Cuando Somos Solteros?
Soy una persona deprimida, pero deprimida es un verbo. Considero mi depresión como el resultado de una posición social y de la inevitable historia de colonización, racismo, del estigma de la gordura y de la discriminación. Estoy tomando antidepresivos, pero éstos solo pueden reprogramar la química de mi cerebro y no la realidad social y material en la que vivo. No puede … [Read more...]
5 Ways to Support Undocumented Folks
As a nation, we are living through a very scary time. And while that may be the understatement of the century, there are particular demographics under attack right now. As a person who works in educating students of color, whose parents may or may not be undocumented, as well as educating undocumented students, I have noticed a shift in their attitudes. I’ve seem some … [Read more...]
Am I Queer Enough To Claim Queerness?
If I remember correctly, I was eight. I walked into the kitchen looking for a fork, and thought to myself, “hmm I am attracted to a girl in my class, so I guess that makes me bisexual. Hmmm,” grabbed my fork and went back to my room. I don’t remember learning the word, but I knew what it meant and how to use it. That is the earliest memory I have of me understanding what my … [Read more...]
Living Inside the Contradictions: My Father’s Love and My Father’s Abuse
I've been thinking a lot lately about the polarized extremes that show up in our public discourse. It's nearly impossible to find a comment thread on the Internet in which people do not feel compelled to take only one position on an issue and to reject any contradiction, any paradox, any additional truths that might illuminate the issue in a more complex way. Perhaps we humans … [Read more...]
Bisexual and Black: Navigating Heteronormativity and Religious Homophobia in the Dating World
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on Postmodern Woman under the title "Learning to Love Without Filter: The Many Contortions in the World of Bisexuality" and is republished with permission. “I want you to myself,” she whispered to me as her soft fingers curled through the baby hair growing on my neck. She twirled a few strands around her fingers and tugged, … [Read more...]
Romantic Love Is Killing Us: Who Takes Care of Us When We’re Single?
I am a depressed person, but depressed is a verb. I consider my depression to be the result of social positions and the inevitable history of colonization, of racism, of fat stigma, discrimination and antagonism. I am on antidepressants, but they can only reprogram my brain chemistry and not my social-material reality. They cannot reprogram the ones I love to give me the care I … [Read more...]
10 Ways To Know When Love Isn’t Love: “Stay Away From People Who Make You Feel Like You’re Hard to Love”
I was raised, taught, and socialized to believe that love is pain. That love is unfair. Raised a woman, I was taught, socialized -- brainwashed -- to believe that love means sacrifice. That as a woman I must martyr myself. That as a woman my value comes from martyring myself to the highest bidder, even if he endeavors to own me, even if he never tries to see past my … [Read more...]
Dear Younger Self: Reflections on Being 25, Disabled, and Learning To Love Yourself
This article originally appeared in the blog Claiming Crip and is reprinted by permission. Dear 15-year-old Karin, I can’t believe I’m 25! I’m not going to lie, when I was your age I never thought I would make it here, and I definitely never thought I might actually like myself (gasp!). Don’t get me wrong, I still have bad days. There are still some things I wish I could … [Read more...]
