RedHead Confetti

TW: Weight and Body Issues; Discussion of Eating Disorders; If you're struggling with an eating disorder, please skip this one. I don't want to trigger you, or set your recovery back. If you haven't already, please reach out for help! Here in Tucson, we have Mirasol , but other cities have other resources. Just google Eating Disorder Help and your city. Please! Get help! This is your life, and it's precious. I can't tell you all how hard this is to write. To see it in black and white text on this blogger dashboard... it was hard enough to admit aloud to a couple friends and my partner when I reached out for help. I don't know when, if, this post will be published, I just need to get it out, and then I'll deal with the emotions it brings up... because goddamn, it's an emotional thing. Please let me be vulnerable with you. Please accept this vulnerability for what it is: a gift. Please hold my feelings carefully, and with the compassion that I n

This is a ramble, a meander, more like a stream of conscious than anything. But I need it today. If you came to my blog for funny, snarky thoughts on random shit, this entry isn't for you. I'm not going to go into everything that's been going on, and contributing to my impetus to write this-- but I know that you'll understand. Thanks for reading! <3 I've had a shit couple of weeks-- close to 6 weeks, if I'm completely frank. I know everyone goes through tough times, so I've tried to keep my head up, my eyes open, and do what I have to do to get through it. You know how it is, it's not easy to put on your "helpful telephone voice" to deal with the same four questions over and over again*, when your stomach is in knots and you haven't had a good night's sleep since May. But, if you're like me, you keep using that perfectly cultured telephone voice, sometimes in person with clients and people around you, and pushing through. I

May 14th is Mother's Day this year, in the US. While I could (and have already) wax poetic, vulgar and profane about how much I despise this holiday, how I hate that it idolizes women who have produced offspring, whether we can raise them, or even wanted them; how it ignores women who have no children-- for whatever reason-- and treats adoptive and foster parents as some how less than those of us with working uteri. So I'm not going to do that today. Today I'm going to celebrate the many different ways a person can be a mother... whether you're a woman, man, non-binary or genderqueer person, or any other way you identify your gender... you don't have to have a uterus or to have given birth to be a mother. Let's celebrate the act of mothering. To be a mother, you're giving yourself, and your love and care to a person that isn't your partner. Although, there are times we give mothering care to our partners, I am not going to talk about that righ

I wrote this the other day, after dreaming it. As often is the case with me and my fiction, I dream all or part of the "story", and then write it down, expanding it, editing it for clarity, or continuing the story that was interrupted by my waking up. The internal monologue style of this one was not my own voice at all, but a Londoner, which made me feel really confused when I woke up-- imagine hearing your own internal voice, with the wrong accent! That's why this one is written from a British perspective, at least as far as I can, being an American. Please let me know what you think of it. I hope you enjoy it. Borrowed Body Highs She was bored, the usual highs weren’t doing it for her any more. She’d tried booze, pot, x, molly, coke, you name it. She didn’t like hallucinogens, because she didn’t like “all the colours”. So she called me while I was down at the shop, and asked me to meet her at this “new book store”. Weird, I thought, what’s a bookstore have

This year, so far, has been a difficult one for many of us. Politics and our activism aside (or as far aside as we can place something so close to our hearts, so innate to who we are), it's not quite the end of the first quarter, and already there have been losses in my family, and in the families of my friend-family. These losses, these deaths, have come with, and without, warning. Some of my friends are in their own watches, waiting for someone they love and adore to pass from life-- knowing it could be tomorrow, or it could be months from now, but wait they do. Some of us already said good bye, and are dealing with the aftermath that this tsunami of grief has created in our lives. I don't have any words of wisdom for anyone going through this; hell, I don't have any words of wisdom for myself going through this. It's just a stage of life I'm going through, something that people I love are going through, and so it's something on my mind right now. In Jan

If you know me, you know my motto/personal life-sentence: Evolve, change, learn! If you stop evolving, changing, learning, you stagnate. If you stagnate, you die. I've been thinking about this motto for a long time, as I've refined, it and truly realised that it is my way of life. Sometimes I think mottoes don't come through a pithy phrase you hear, but through a life you live. For me, this has been the case. I've always been curious, and always wanted to know absolutely everything about everything! If it's relevant to my life, I want to know how it works, and why it works that way. This one fact about me, is a huge part of why I left the religion of my childhood, explored other philosophies and why I'm an Atheist today. I've looked for the answers in the nooks and crannies of life, in science and in the world around me, in the minds of people I admire, in words and poems, in history and in every other place I could. I've learned how to knit and c

Yesterday, January 21, 2017, I walked with 15,000 Tucson residents and visitors; I marched for Women, for Immigrants, for Religious Minorities, for  Persons of Colour, and everyone else who stands in solidarity and is working for equality. I didn't watch the Inauguration-- the first one I've missed watching on television in my adult life. I couldn't say good bye to Mr Barack Obama and his lovely life-partner, Michelle Obama, and say hello to Donald Trump and Melania. I couldn't watch, I couldn't listen to the speeches, see the sad parade, or listen to the few "F" listed bands and musical acts that were convinced to participate in the event that day, or the night before. Rather, I prepared myself for the Women's March, on Sunday. I marched in the windy streets of downtown Tucson, expecting rain. I knew my sisters marched in snow, rain, flooding and cold, across the United States, and (as I later learned) in many, many countries across the world! W

I have been working on this one for a little while; it's been sitting as a draft for I don't know how long, and I refuse to look at the date on my Word doc to know for sure. It has been hard to write lately, as I see so much ugliness following the Presidential election. I've been assessing my life, making sure my voice is heard even louder than before and making certain that my sisters and brothers out there know I stand with them, and will Resist the coming administration, and any unconstitutional laws that may come down. That's why this blog went on the back burner for a few weeks. This open letter speaks to an earlier version of myself, as well as to all the Baby Feminists I know who are coming through their 20's in the 20-teens. Any comments are welcome, as long as they don't attack anyone. Disagree if you wish, just be respectful and let me know why you disagree. Personal attacks will be deleted. Dear Baby Feminists: Welcome, welcome! I truly w