In My Own Words, Lifestyle

Happy 168th Homecoming, Cornell College

Happy 168th Homecoming to Cornell College. I doubt they've had 168 homecoming celebrations. Did homecoming even exist in 1853? (Cornell University sure didn't. Ha! We're the older, smaller, and better (not a subjective opinion, at all) cousin—literally—in Iowa. Easily confusable, I know.) As a die-hard alum, I filled my house with flowers in school colors in honor of homecoming.

In My Own Words, Lifestyle

Hey! I’m Queer. Happy Pride!

Hey, y’all. I’m queer. Pansexual to be specific. This isn’t my coming out. I’m fully out of the closet. If I’m being honest, I never had an I’m-not-straight talk with anyone. It’s just been something that has existed as a solid fact in my life for a decade now. My non-heterosexual identity has been talked about for awhile, but as I get older, I’m feeling the need to live more loudly in my queer identity.

In My Own Words, Lifestyle

In Seven Days, I Turn 30 Years Old

In a week, I turn 30. I'm very much looking forward to it, but a small part of me is dreading it. Society deems women of a certain age unworthy of... everything, and I am now about to be a woman of a certain age. There are so many exciting things about aging, but my existence has always and almost solely been validated for the way I look. Who I am is just a bonus to the way I look for the man I'll one day trap/catch. The world has told me so many things about aging and my existence in the world. I would be lying if I said I hadn't ended up on the kitchen floor in a full on panic attack about aging in society.  

Close up of The Awakening on Galveston Beach.
Books, Fiction, In My Own Words, Lifestyle

Remembering and Rereading Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

The Awakening by Kate Chopin came to me the summer I most desperately needed to find a woman who understood. I was in the midst of a crisis: The crisis of being a woman. I was finding out its darkest meaning in the most horrific ways. Finding one person, however fictional, validated the tragedies I lived and the ones I had yet to experience.