Diane DeBella and I Am Subject: Women sharing their stories to become “subjects” in the 21st century
Did you know that women couldn’t vote in Switzerland until 1971? And even then, not all women were included. It wasn’t until 1990 that the conservative region of Appenzell Innerrhoden gave women the right to vote at cantonal level, and it did so only because the federal supreme court forced the issue. While Switzerland wasn’t..
The events of last Thursday and Friday ripped open countless women’s wounds, revictimizing them and forcing them to relive their own trauma. I was one of those women. I found myself shaking, wrapping my arms around myself as I rocked back and forth, trying to control my breath as I watched both Dr. Blasey..
The biggest predictor of change is misery. The biggest reason people will change is because they are suffering to a degree that they can’t continue to live the same way. ~ Dr. Cortney S. Warren, Clinical Psychologist Denial is a film about climate change. That was the original intention of both the director, Derek..
Love is at the root of everything, all learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love or the lack of it. ~ Fred Rogers I wish that as a child I had paid closer attention to Mr. Rogers. If I had, I might have saved myself decades of pain. His core message, from the time the..
I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks. ~ RBG What surprised me most about Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s documentary RBG was how much I didn’t know about the iconic Supreme Court Justice—and what I didn’t know made me..
“You raise your consciousness to a level where you feel that you must do the right thing, because it is the only right thing to do.” ~ Wangari Maathai As I left the theater after the screening of the documentary Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, her words kept running through my..
One step forward, two back. Every wave of momentum is followed by a backlash. We’re seeing a bit of that backlash now in the wake of the #metoo movement. I’ve engaged in numerous discussions recently regarding the naming of perpetrators. People seem to be searching for a litmus test of some sort. How far back..
My daughter is home from college for winter break, and the other night we sat down to watch Losing Sight of Shore, a documentary that followed a team of women taking on the challenge of rowing across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco, California to Cairns, Australia—no small feat. In fact, it took four..
Over the years, as a teacher of women writers, and as a woman writer myself, I have taught and written about countless women, their lives, and their works. I don’t shy away from a challenge. After all, I have taught Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I have examined the demons that pursued Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath,..
One of the messages I have consistently shared since putting my own story out into the world four years ago is that by sharing our truths, we can heal ourselves and help others. That is why I started the Healing Stories Project. Yesterday afternoon I was lucky enough to attend an extremely moving storytelling..