I can't sleep…
Women can endure things and keep going because our lives are made up of small practical physical tasks, and no matter how lonely or sad or humiliated you are, you do the dishes, or wash the clothes, and you come to the end of a small task and see a small result.
— Helen Garner, One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995.
Notes: Portrait of Helen Garner from The New Daily
Watch it…
Notes:
Take a moment for yourself…Every day. A Moment. A moment where YOU are your own priority. Just you… Not your work…not your filthy house, not anything. Just you…. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment…Then recommit…
On the other hand, wasn’t that the very definition of life? Constant adaptations brought about by a series of never-ending mistakes? ….
And as humans, we’re by-products of our upbringings, victims of our lackluster educational systems, and choosers of our behaviors. In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological: it’s cultural. And it starts with two words: pink and blue. Everything skyrockets out of control from there…
— Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel (Doubleday, April 5, 2022)
Compared to the alternate realities that could have happened, how can I want for anything more in this one?
— Gina Frangello, Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason (Counterpoint, April 6, 2021)
Notes: NY Times Editor’s Choice 9 New Books We Recommend This Week (May 13, 2021)
I always wanted to be the kind of woman James Taylor would sing: I feel fine, anytime she’s around me now to. “Something in the Way She Moves.” You know that song.
Don’t you wish someone wanted to sing that song to you?