I am aware we’re well into the second month of 2024, but I’m still processing 2023. I need some time. I wanted it to be the year that everything changed. I had a very specific vision for what that change would be. I was right but wrong. 2023 was one of the most eventful and biggest years of my life, but in none of the ways I planned. I’m 93% really, super excited about everything and 7% ‘what the fuck?’ about it.
Give me a reason for a photoshoot… You don’t have to. I will make up my own.
I made some of the most incredible friends. For whatever reason, 2023 was the year of friends. I had intended on expanding my friend horizons, figuring I would pick up the kind of friends you call to hang out with on a weekend night or something. Instead, I filled my life with the friends I co-work, travel, grocery shop, cry, vent, deep dive, cook, dance, sing, bar hop, vegetate with and more. They’re the most amazing group of women.
Reading took up less space in my life. I basically majored in reading real good in three languages in college; I’m currently sitting in my office surrounded by a whole lot of books; most people think of me and books synonymously; so the fact I only read 18 books last year is shocking. I stepped back from the stories of others and kept myself busy as I lived, worked, socialized more. Though this is a good thing, I have a pile of books to read and review. I’m slowly making some headway.
Once upon a time in 2018, I made a best friend. This best friend is a floral designer. This best friend is charismatic, vivacious, and persuasive. This best friend played the long game and conned me into becoming a floral designer myself between 2020 and now. In 2023, I started taking on my responsibilities in her business, and now, flowering has become a significant portion of my life. To the point, I’m freelancing for other Houston florists. Couldn’t have seen that coming.
My birthday was the most fun I’ve ever had clothed. Amanda planned an out of this world party for me the weekend before my birthday, and on the day of, my best friends made it the most exceptional day of my entire life up until that point. I didn’t think that day (for that matter that month) would ever be topped. The year was exceptional in more ways than one, and it still counts as the second best day ever.
In 2021, one of my closest friends told me to start saving, we would be going to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia in 2023. I, never one to turn down a trip, said “fuck yes.” At the time, I had no interest in soccer. Now, I love it very much. So much… I saw the Women’s Final in Sydney last August. It was an incredible thing to experience, and I can’t wait for 2027. The world finds out where we’re going in May.
Somehow, I made it to two new continents in the span of a few days. In the middle of my Australia trip, I took a ten day detour to Asia. As an addendum to this, I thought I would only visit Australia once, but I have technically been to Australia three times in 2023—although, I really only count the first two times as one time because it was a part of the same trip.
Cambodia was the number one thing on my travel bucket list for over 21 years. I never actively planned or planned on planning a trip to Cambodia, but it was a spur of the moment decision to add it into my Australia trip. I’m so glad I did because it ended up being my last single girl trip, and I couldn’t have picked a better destination to really enjoy being a happy, single, free 30 something.
Getting tattooed on three continents in one week was never something I thought of or dreamed I would be able to say, and yet… I can. Tattoos are an important part of my self and image at this point in time. I like them and use them to document who I am in an external way. Last minute, I decided to get a tattoo within 12 hours of leaving Cambodia. I had appointments for later in the week in Australia and US. It was unintentional, and I love this fun fact about myself.
Decided to change all of my plans, and I’m really happy about it. I had a very definitive path forward. Then I went on a trip that changed everything. I decided to change all of my plans to follow my heart. I’m young. I have as few responsibilities as I’m ever going to have. So, fuck it. I’m doing the damn thing.
Kangaroos are more rampant than bunnies and squirrels and deer combined in Australia. This was a massive surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was not expecting what the reality of living in Australia with kangaroos actually is. I did not really have any expectations for kangaroos, but driving through Australia, I’m realizing I know nothing and I have all the questions.
Kate proposed. Not only did I get myself a British/Australian girlfriend on the other side of the world. I got myself a British/Australian fiancée on the other side of the world. I still can’t hardly believe I’m typing this with a ring on my hand and a wedding date in my calendar.
2023! What a year of surprises. Life is hard. I’ve been through a whole entire lot in the last 32.5 years, but 2023 was the most exceptional year of my life, and I have a feeling things are only going to keep getting more exciting and fun.
I’m a dame traveler. While I was on the biggest trip I’ve ever taken, I met the woman I call my partner in Australia. So now, I have one exceptionally amazing reason to travel even more.
Women are amazing. I am obsessed with them. I’m also lucky enough to be a lesbian [maybe not “lucky” in the political sense…], so I’ve gotten to know women as humans, friends, adventurers, lovers, coworkers, and more.
In a world where women are still a minority after millenia of subjugation, they never cease to defy convention and live their lives unabashedly. I’m sure throughout history, there have been countless women who have done the same in their own extraordinary ways, but the vast majority have been lost to history through erasure and a failure to see the importance and document… Thanks, men.
With the rise of social media—also education, healthcare, right to vote, legal protection, employment, status as almost human, etc, but that was just the groundwork for what women do on Instagram—women have visibility, representation, autonomy, and power in a completely unprecedented way. Women are living their lives publicly. And they’re doing it in a really aesthetically pleasing way. But pretty pictures in cool places is not what Dame Traveler by Nastasia Yakoub is really showcasing. It’s about women untethered. Women who are not afraid to see the world alone, with others, on their own terms, and document it. The fact women feel important enough to document themselves, their travels, their lives, their art is a feat in and of itself. The world has finally arrived at a place where women are deemed human enough to be interesting enough to care enough to give us space enough to exist. Not only are women doing it and posting about it, there are now books in bookstores for little girls, little boys, and little theys to see and make their own dreams.
While my girlfriend was at work, I did some touristy things… like take pictures in front of the iconic Bathing Boxes at Brighton Beach in Melbourne, Australia.
This is an interesting book to review because it is mostly an amalgam of pictures by creators from around the world, whose work has been showcased on Yakoub’s curated instagram account @dametraveler. There are snippets from contributors as well as information and tips about certain locations. Yakoub could have created a book dedicated to her own travels and photography. Instead, she used this opportunity to support and document incredible women who believe enough to do. Divided into sections on architecture, water, culture, and nature, Dame Traveler delves into a photographic exploration of the diverse feminine gaze of a world too large for any one person to experience fully. So, for those of us who are trying to know the world in its entirety, we must turn to beautiful collections like this to explore, learn, and grow.
Yakoub curated a stunning book. The only thing stopping me from grabbing my passport and leaving permanently is my dogs and bank account. Until then, this will be sitting on my coffee table to daydream through.
Last month, I went to Australia for the second (technically, third) time since August. I was there for two weeks, which is longer than I was there the first time by a week. The reason? When I was in Melbourne in August, I met the most amazing woman and fell in love. We decided to give this a try before I even left the country.
So I returned two months after our first date to be with her as my girlfriend for the first time. Gay, so gay, but we’re gay, so it figures. While I was there, I was exploring the city that could end up being my home. As much fun as this distance thing is, I really can’t wait to not have my girlfriend 15 time zones away in another hemisphere.
An important part of falling in love with a city, for me, is photographing it. If I take in a city as a tourist, I enjoy it deeply; know my way around; familiarize myself with its facets; but I don’t carry it in my soul. To really have a place etched on my heart, I have to perceive it as art. So I slow down, keeping my camera strap wrapped around my hand, looking. I find the beauty in the natural, the hope in the pristine, the history in the dilapidated, the humor in the contiguity, the love in the people. Through a lens, I try to capture places and humans in the way I see them. Beautiful and unique in the minutiae to the sweeping.
I have always loved pictures. Taking them. Looking at them. It’s been only recently that I’ve even thought of myself as a photographer rather than someone who takes pictures. I love the photographs as much for the art as the memories they contain.
I’ve been home from what feels like my second home, Melbourne, for two weeks. I didn’t just fall in love with Melbourne and Australia because I fell in love in Melbourne and Australia. Though, that is a massive part of why it feels so immediately like home. It’s a beautiful city in an exceptional part of the world. I took a lot of pictures in the beginning, and then I spent a lot of time being present without my camera or phone, learning what life with my person actually feels like. So, now that I’ve been home long enough to go through and edit my favorite pictures. I give you: 11[ish]… Pictures I Love from Melbourne and the Sapphire Coast. We are going in chronological order.
Elmer!!! This is my girlfriend’s cat. He is such a handsome man, and, honestly, one of the most incredible cats I’ve ever met. Sorry to all my friends. He’s a ragdoll and the love of my girlfriend’s life. I’m not even upset about that. He knows how to sit and paw on command. What a dude.
2. Moments Along the Yarra One (two) taken along the Yarra, flowing through Melbourne. My first full day in Australia, I had a lazy morning before Kate had to work in the CBD. While she was in meetings, I wandered along the river, taking pictures of things I liked. This boat and a walking bridge connecting the two sides.
3. Brighton Bathing Boxes I spent a morning exploring the iconic 20th century bathing boxes at Brighton Beach. It was a chilly, overcast day, which is my favorite for exploring and photographing. There are fewer crowds and better lighting. There were so many cool bathing boxes, each painted a different color and even theme.
4. Tathra Beach Over a long weekend, we hopped in the car and headed to the Sapphire Coast—Tathra, New South Wales to be specific. It’s a beautiful part of the country, and there were so few people there. It made a lovely place feel even more special. This canoe was just sitting there, and I loved it.
5. Mimosa Rocks National Park Oh what a beach this was!!! I absolutely fell in love with it. Kate and I both love the sea and quiet moments by it. So while she watched the surf and the horizon, I climbed rocks, took pictures, and prayed I wouldn’t slip in and ruin my camera. I didn’t. I really love this picture. It might be the most screensaver image I’ve ever taken.
6. Sapphire Coast Though you can’t tell from this picture, the water is a stunning shade of blue. I get why it’s named such. There was something incredibly powerful and peaceful about the waves crashing into the rocks. I’m a bit obsessed.
7. Echidna A swift pullover with no warning, drew my attention to the spikey boy crossing the road. Kate had stopped the car quickly so I could get out and snag a portrait of this distinguished gentleman. I didn’t even think about hoping to see an echidna, but I did. They’re neat!!!
8. Beans Whenever I travel and find out about a lesbian bar in a city, I do my best to visit. I didn’t even plan this, we met up with a friend at Melbourne’s lesbian, nonbinary, trans, neurodivergent bar in Fitzroy. It was cool!
9. Cheese Counter at Preston Market Preston Market is my new happy place. Partially because they have amazing arepas. Partially because I can have any food I crave plus coffee in one space. Partially because I love authentic, diverse markets. Partially because seeing how happy it makes Kate makes me happy. On a Saturday, we woke up and walked to the market (it’s so wild to exist in a walkable space), and I, of course, made my way to the cheese counter.
10. Holding Hands I love holding her hand. It’s exciting and grounding, and I do not get to hold her hand whenever I want to… yet. On the way to the airport, I took this picture surreptitiously. There is something so remarkably intimate and vulnerable about reaching for someone’s hand.
11. California Mountains This isn’t in Australia but the view after taking off from San Francisco on my way back to Texas. The view was absolutely incredible. I couldn’t fall asleep, but my brain wasn’t working enough to write or even read. So I took pictures and edited them. I do love this one.
I will never understand people who fly with the blinds shut. Let alone people who don’t point out the window so their children can feel the awe of a vast world below. [But that’s an entirely different opinion, I think.]
There are so many who will never see the world like this. It’s a way of transportation, sure, but it’s also an immense privilege.
We live in a time like no other. The Wright Brothers only just took flight in 1903.
Planes have fascinated me for much longer than my memory serves. To this day, I love being at the airport. For just about every reason you can think of from the scientific to the sociological to the engineering to the sheer joy of flying off on an adventure. They’re fascinating.
We spend so much money flying. It’s expensive and oftentimes the fastest if not only way to get some places. Whether it’s work or travel, it’s an incredible feat of humanity to be in the sky. Strip all the possibilities away down to one: you’re paying a lot of money for that view. Also… going through security/customs deserves a good view.
The world is stunning.
Clouds and topography, I clammer for window seats and spend the majority of my flight daydreaming out the window. Of the far off majestic places I know exist somewhere over the horizon. Of the people and stories to hear in abundance too great for any one person to know all the stories of just one person. A planet as fertile as it is ravaged. A civilization as generous as it is greedy. I’m an idealist at heart, but shhhh don’t tell anyone. Looking at the lands I know and don’t, I can’t help but think: This world is beyond words, and yet, we’re collectively destroying it.
How can one look out the window of an airplane and not be left a little in reverence of its abundance and desolation? Maybe if more people did, the world would be a bit of a better place.
A month ago, I was on the trip of a lifetime in Cambodia and Australia. The how that odd combination came about is a bit of a long story, which I will get to at some point in time because I’m notoriously bad at writing about my travels until they’re long passed.
Seeing the Sydney Opera House for the first time.
Exploring the temples of Angkor Wat.
Anyhow, I was in Cambodia and Australia for three weeks, and it was the best goddamn trip of my entire life. It was life changing; then, it was more life changing. I think it’s going to be one of the most life altering, influential trips of my life. Before this trip, I was working towards a future, but, now, I am incredibly excited about my future.
While on my trip, there were a lot of life lessons. I would love to admit they were new and earth shattering. They weren’t. They were all things I knew cognitively and have preached but not really done because I’m a giant hypocrite. So, here are some of the lessons I learned while I was traversing the globe.
Playing in the ocean at Sunset Beach on Koh Rong Sanleom, Cambodia.
Cambodia is not at all close to Australia. I booked my trip within a trip thinking, ‘Gee, I’m already on that side of the world. Can’t be that long of a flight.’ Jokes on me. The flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur was longer than the longest flights I’d been on before this trip by a chunk. They may be close in time zones, but they’re in completely different hemispheres. I promise, I’m not dumb.
Let friends help. I’m so bad at accepting help. My trip started off… Well, I legitimately had a panic attack before I’d even arrived at my gate in Houston. This trip was almost the very worst experience of my life. I’m me and can figure it out. But more importantly, I accepted help that was given freely and with love from a few very close friends. Hindsight, so fucking glad I did. My entire trip would’ve been miserable otherwise.
Just go. I was a bit anxious about Cambodia. Likely not for the reasons you’re thinking. It’s the first time I’ve been in a country where I don’t speak the language. Not even a little bit. I knew NOTHING. I picked up some. Very little. I tried. Khmer is beautiful. I wasn’t perfect at it, but the people are amazing, and I didn’t need to be.
Spend the money. I have always been on the save, save, save for vacations so I can spend, spend, spend whatever I want (within budget) on the trip. I have always enjoyed just doing and buying the things I never would in my real life while traveling. This trip went a bit different. I’m also older. I spent money in a different way than I used to. I came home with almost nothing because I didn’t really want anything. I spent a bunch of money on doing stuff and staying in cool places.
Don’t spend the money. There were a lot of factors in not spending money on things. I’m older than I used to be and have more stuff than I know what to do with. I also no longer believe I need souvenirs to remember a trip by. Although, I would really love a chair from Cambodia. Pictures are now my keepsake of choice. I also had the constraint of changing places almost every day and bopping between CONTINENTS and having to carry everything. I had a plethora of opportunities to spend money on things. I chose not to. A month later, I don’t regret it.
I have cell phone service in the Cambodian jungle. I can facetime my dogs from a remote Cambodian island. But I couldn’t send a text from Grand Canyon National Park. The RIM. Not even IN the canyon. This will never cease to amaze me.
Let your friends bully you. I mean, not in the realest definition of the word ‘bully,’ but in the friendly, they-love-you-and-want-the-best-for-you way. I listened to my friend, Sabina, and that literally changed the trajectory of my future. I will be forever grateful.
Trust your gut. I am notorious for overriding my gut feeling. In everything from life to love. My gut has always, always, alwaysbeen right. Why did it take me this fucking long to listen to it. I trusted my gut the entire trip, and I’ve never had a better, easier trip in my entire life.
Trust strangers. This is actually something I’ve always been pretty good at. There was a moment when I was 30 minutes into a tuk tuk ride, taking me out of the capital into rural Cambodia, passing cows and farmland with a man I had just met three hours earlier, munching on lotus he’d bought me, no questions asked, and the thought ‘Hmmm… this could’ve been a bad idea.’ Except it was a brilliant idea! I trusted my gut, which lets me trust strangers. Which turns strangers into friends. And friends make life so much more fun. FYI Bunna is the kindest man and best tuk tuk driver. If you’re ever in Phnom Penh, I’ll give you his number.
Keep your heart and mind open. It’s the best way to travel. It’s the best way to live. It’s always led me in really interesting directions. I think it might be leading me into the most exciting adventure of my life.
Go for it. Don’t look back.
Bisous und обьятия!
Looking at Popokvil Waterfall in Bokor National Park.
A baby Northern pig-tailed macaque watching from the trees in Bokor National Park outside of Kampot, Cambodia.
Learning how to surf at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
George Peabody Library sits on the Mt. Vernon Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Founded in 1857 with a donation of $300,000 by George Peabody to create an accessible cultural center of learning for all. The original structure was finished in 1866, but the library seen today was finished in 1878 and designed by architect Edmund George Lind. When it opened, it was dedicated to the kindness and hospitality of Baltimore. At its inception, the librarians curated and pursued a list of 50,000 specific books to line the shelves regardless of price or difficulty. Today, the library stacks are home to a collection of more than 300,000 works ranging from rare first editions to 15th century tomes, including first edition Hawthornes, Melvilles, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The rare book rooms’ newest books date from the 1700s. The collection is always growing with a focus on 18th and 19th century works.
Walking into the main atrium, the eye is met with stacks five tiers high, lined by ornamental cast-iron balconies. The library is capped by a stunning skylight soaring 61 feet above quiet readers below, illuminating the entire space with a warm comfort so rarely found in rooms so large. Created to be free and open to the public, despite changing hands multiple times, it is still a free and open library to the public. Though the collection is non-circulating, readers and researchers can explore the works while enjoying its immense beauty.
I was in awe.
It is immensely beautiful.
Visit
Visiting George Peabody Library has been really the only thing left on my Bucket List for years. I have actively been making plans and trying to go for many, many years. Those plans fell through every time. In October, I went on a roadtrip to Washington DC. There were lots of plans with lots of activities. When asked what I wanted to see on the trip, the only thing I said, “I’d like to take a trip to Baltimore and see the library.”
Done.
We took a day trip to Baltimore and I fell a little bit in love with the city. I went when I was 18 and adored it. As an adult with an even better grasp and love for history, I was in heaven. Historically, it’s a fascinating city. Architecturally, it’s stunning. Culturally, wow. It sits at an intersection of so many interests of mine as a human, learner, and writer of social justice. I would love to go back and spend more time existing there.
Parking in front of the Mt. Vernon campus, the building is as gorgeous as every other 19th century building in the neighborhood. But there was nothing differentiating it from all the other incredible façades. So much so, I tried going in the side door as it was just as magnificent as the main entrance. Even standing in front of the door, I was vibrating with anticipation. Actually the whole drive there.
Getting to the library, we had to walk through the entryway, take a left, and then walk through a large room of stuff, which was probably a museum of sorts. I should have looked, but I was ready to see what I had come to see and didn’t really pay any attention. Obviously. And also fighting off an anxious pee feeling that was totally unnecessary and over the top. The moment I could see through the doorway, I started crying. I couldn’t help it. It was very embarrassing. A bad case of Stendahls Syndrome. Of course there’s a video because my friend is an asshat and documents everything. I wandered and cried. Thank God, I eventually stopped crying and kept wandering. I tiptoed through card catalogs, read every plaque, sat in awe of the sheer beauty, size, and knowledge this one room held. I took a crap ton of photos. So many pictures. None of which will ever do the room justice, though they’re brilliant. I don’t know what I expected. But I didn’t expect the library to be just a massive room in an even bigger building, yet it is.
I spent two hours soaking in that moment I had waited so long to enjoy.
I will always explore card catalogues.
More Than Stendahls Syndrome
As I walked into George Peabody Library, I was swept with so many complex emotions. I started crying. I tried to play it cool, but I am not a chill person. Part of me did cry because of the immense, architectural beauty. It’s art. Part of me cried because I was with someone who had no idea how much that moment meant to me but made it happen anyways. Sometimes, small things are not small things.
I stood there crying and sniffling for more than just Stendahls Syndrome.
Libraries always have a tendency to bring up the emotional side of me. It does exist, very, very deep down. As a writer, I know how much effort one book requires. As a writer in the time of computers makes it far easier, faster, and less physically taxing to actually write a book. Imagine writing an entire book with a quill… imagine the typos. My hand hurts thinking about that. The amount of knowledge in that one room alone is more than I will ever acquire no matter how dedicated I am to the pursuit. Libraries are a testament to the lives of people who dedicated themselves to gaining and proliferating knowledge. In their own ways, many of which I do not agree with, they were trying to make the world a better place. That is what I also aspire to do. It’s hard not to be a little overcome with emotion when one steps back from themselves to acknowledge the effort put into the existence and purpose of libraries. I do not believe in God. I do not go to church. I do believe in knowledge. Truth is my God. Libraries are my sanctuary.
Standing just inside the door as a gay woman, I was hit with more than awe. This library was not meant for me. As a woman, an out gay woman, had I walked into the library upon its construction, I would have been imprisoned existing the way I do. Hell, there are a great many places today I could still be arrested or even executed for existing as I am. It was built in a time when 20% (optimistic) of the population was illiterate and less than 2% of the population went to college. Fuck women on that statistic, there isn’t a percentage available. Wesleyan, the first women’s college, only opened twenty years prior. George Peabody Library was meant for everyone, but not really. It was created in a time where the “everyone” was implicitly understood as white men, maybe refined, respectable ladies who were educated but not too much. I am not either of those things by today’s standards let alone the standards of 1860s America.
The first Ivy’s—Princeton and Yale—didn’t even start admitting women until 1969. Women have had to fight with everything we have, including our lives, for the privilege, the right to receive an education.
Education. Knowledge. That is the path forward. Ensuring women—49.72% of the population—are educated is how the world turns around. Yet there are so many roadblocks for us. They’ve been lessened in this country and others by the lives and fights of so many women who have gone before us. But there are still so many obstacles. From societal pressures, laws, cost, so on and so forth.
Malala was shot in the head because she advocated for girls’ education in 2012.
I’m angry.
I am angry for all women. But this hits home for me. For over a decade I have, in so many unknowing ways, downplayed my fight for education. I have never been quiet about the fact I was a stripper to pay for college. So often, people hear “stripping” and latch on. They want those stories. It’s unique, and I’m open about it. I’m a novelty. I’m an information resource fountain about a taboo yet extremely intriguing topic from anecdotal and scholarly standpoints. I know my shit, and I lived it. The part about stripping to PAY for college is glanced over. I think, emotionally, I always glanced over it too. Standing in the George Peabody Library, for whatever reason, it hit me. I did all of that to learn.
I graduated in 2014 from Cornell College with a triple major in Literature, French, and Russian with an emphasis in Literary Translation and Analysis. I did it in four years. I paid for it by working 100+ hours a week (it is possible, hard, yet possible), taking my clothes off for men who didn’t give a fuck if I lived or died, figuring out better ways to withstand the physical and psychological violence. I did all of that so I could have an EDUCATION. I tried so many other ways. But I was shit out of luck. When I went to the financial aid office, I was told to join the military, get married, have a child, or drop out and wait until I turned 26. None of those were options. So I stepped outside of respectable society for knowledge, ultimately, a piece of paper.
And I am so fucking proud of myself for doing that. I fought for my education. I gave up so much. I still live with the repercussions of that decision and I always will. I knew what I was doing and the ripple effects it would have on my life and future, intellectually. I was not stupid. My eyes were wide open. As much as they can be. Reality is always different. I don’t regret it. I never have. I wish I’d had other options, a choice. I wish the country we live in prioritized people rather than money. I wish men knew how to treat women, all women—sex workers included—well. I wish college wasn’t so expensive. I would also do it again. Knowing everything I know now, I made the right choice when I was left with no choices to make. I chose an education above all else.
The fucked up part… I made that choice twelve years ago.
TWELVE.
A year before Malala was shot on the other side of the world in her own fight for women’s education. I was sitting on a strip club counter studying when the notification popped up on my phone. I live in a first-world country, and I was still forced to fight for an education.
In so many ways, it was a different time, but all that’s really changed is college is more expensive and stripping is only infinitesimally less villainized. Even then, as a poor, desperate college student, I knew I was so privileged. I am a white woman. I was “straight” when I started stripping. I had every seeming advantage. I still had to fight to learn. I dodged sexual assault, rape threats, death threats, a shooting, knives, and more over the course of four years so I could graduate, move on, get a good job, build a life.
So often, I come across as straight-laced. I am. I like rules. But I’ve always been a rebel. I have always pushed back. I do not fit in the society that is, but I’m trying to open society so there’s a place for me, women, minorities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and everyone who feels othered.
My fight for education looks different than most women’s. Yet, it’s so similar. I leveraged sex and femininity in the same way women have for all of written history to access information, power, safety, comfort, literally everything. I took the only thing I had—my body and mind—to dare to grasp for more than what was being offered. I succeeded. I didn’t die. I get to move on and rebuild and heal. I get to use the knowledge I worked so hard for to advocate for other women so one day no woman will be turned away from learning.
