2013

2013 has arrived!  I spent the evening with my closest friends from high school and college, enjoying the crowds in our old college town for a few hours before walking home in the freezing cold and eating cinnamon rolls while watching house hunters. Clearly, we know how to rage.

I had a somewhat awkward encounter with an old high school acquaintance while we were out--someone who was once a close friend but who inexplicably drifted and became quite cold and mean. I had been pondering a resolution and running into her solidified it--I don't ever want to become the person who is mean for no reason, and who has only negative things to say. I think 2013 is my year to look inward: I want to find more patience, kindness, and continue being conscious of how I treat others. I want to leave them feeling better about themselves, not worse.

In retrospect, 2012 was an exciting year.

I graduated college, moved to a new state, began graduate school, and had the most academically challenging four months of my life.

I spent countless precious nights with friends enjoying our last few months together and was separated from the people I had gone to school with for over a decade. However, I also met amazing people in Nashville who are already dear to me, and I can't wait to see what those friendships grow into over the next few months.

Its been a year of change and growth, with some high highs and a couple of real lows, but I'm a lucky girl: I have a family that is supportive and loving, friends who are hilarious and kind, and I am at an amazing school that is pushing me to new places intellectually and academically.

I'm so excited for what 2013 has in store. Here's hoping for lots of love, luck, happiness, delicious meals, wonderful conversations, new relationships beginning, old relationships strengthening, and peace and serenity  to carry us through the tough parts!

 

NEWTOWN

I've had Newtown Connecticut and Sandy Hook Elementary School on my mind since Friday afternoon.

I feel completely shaken by the loss of these innocent lives, the way in which this event unfolded. I'm horrified at the world we live in and inspired by the courage and compassion I've seen broadcasted nonstop over the news networks. It breaks my heart that we so often need these stark reminders to bring us all together.

I wish we could be so loving and giving all the time. I feel profound sadness whenever I look at my family's Christmas tree because I know that some families will have to face this holiday season with a terrible loss on their shoulders. I feel immense respect and sympathy for the first responders who walked into a first grade classroom and saw the worst imaginable scenario come to life. Its been a lot for me to take in, and I'm still struggling with how to make sense of it all.

I don't want to step into treacherous territory and spew opinions without a better understanding of the circumstances, but I am hopeful that this event will begin a dialogue about guns, violence and mental illness in this country. We still have such a long way to go. I don't want the names of these kids or their teachers fade as quickly as those from Virginia Tech did, or even those lost in Aurora.  We owe them a lot more than a few days of attention--they deserve to have change realized on their behalf. I hope that we can make this possible, whether its through laws, reform, or how we raise our children as a community.

We still have a long way to go.

Reproductive Rights

I'm not secretive about my feminism--in fact, I LOVE to talk about feminism, about the role of women in our world, about societal expectations of women, about slut-shaming, and most importantly, about the power of women.

I firmly believe that empowering women is an essential element of progress. Its easy for us as western women to feel disconnected from the struggles women face elsewhere--I'm not subject to genital mutilation. I can freely pursue my education. I have an avenue, however flawed it may be, to punish those who violate my body. Despite these options, there is still a lot that I don't have. Our bodies are stil legislated over, with decisions being made for us by governmental bodies which fail to represent us. Women's bodies are objectified, chopped, represented crudely, and are generally treated as the property of society as a whole; as topics available for conversation and judgment and scorn.

The rights I have over my body, my reproductive rights, matter to me. I think they matter for us all. I encourage you to keep standing up for them in whatever way you feel is right. If you're interested in taking an affirmative action, head on over here: http://www.drawtheline.org and sign your name. Its an issue that affects all women and all men who care about the women in their lives.

 

 

 

"From one seed, a whole handful: that was what it meant to say the bounty of the earth"

-J.M. Coetzee

 

these summer mornings at home have taken on a wonderful routine: walking barefooted through the dewy morning grass to the fig tree my dad planted a few years ago. Pushing aside the big velvety leaves, picking the plump purple figs off of their branches. Leaving a few behind for the birds and squirrels, savoring the rest for breakfast, for lunch, for dessert. Every bite brings me such joy: they taste like sunshine, patience, and home.

"please update me on your feelings"*

*a request from a friend that made me smile with its candor and simplicity. Good friends are everything.

As I sit surrounded by boxes, packaging tape, and the endless amount of junk I've managed to accumulate over the last four years, my feelings are, admittedly, scattered. It only takes one quick look around my apartment for me to feel relief that I am leaving it behind. Seeing my law school admissions papers gave me butterflies in my stomach--some out of fear--but mostly out of excitement at the brand new adventures that are waiting for me 300 miles away from here. I am so ready for a change-that I am sure of.

Theres sadness too though. Packing away the picture on my fridge of me and my friends, dressed in black and red and white at a football game, makes me miss them terribly. Closing a chapter is bittersweet, especially one that has been filled with so much growth and so many great memories. Even though I graduated three months ago (what the what? where did summer go?!), I'm just now coming to terms with the real end of things. When I get in my car tomorrow, that will be it. Bye bye for real.

Despite the nostalgia for these years and this town that is sure to take root in me as soon as I being unpacking in my new place, I am at peace with the end of my time here. I'm ready to take all of the things I've learned about myself and all of the growing I've done since I was 18 and apply it to a new beginning. At the end of the day, few things in life are as liberating and freeing as a clean slate and a fresh start, and I fully intend to embrace it and make the very most of it.

"Nevertheless, in my fantasy I take a sailboat to the Cayman Islands and live outside the law, an old gray-haired lady, browned and wrinkled, who arrives each day to pick books she has ordered from Amazon. There at the sun-drenched dock by the turquoise sea in which coral reefs shimmer as fish of every rainbow color dash about, I will write postcards to those I have left behind. I will befriend drunken sailors, ex-cons, fugitives from white-collar investigations, and little children who dive for pennies when the cruise ships arrive. Or not."

- Epilogue by Anne Rophie