Molly Tolsky gets stuff done. She's an editor extraordinaire: She was a former editor at Kveller (a women's site focused on Jewish parenting) and is also currently the senior editor for No Tokens (a literary magazine). But now, she's started another lifestyle brand: Alma. The official site just launched today, which is, as the site says, "for ladies with chutzpah."
Read More
Via Rebecca Gonzales
Art, Activism & Motherhood: Poet & Book Binder Rebecca Gonzales
...bookbinding, activism, and mothering brown boys in these tumultuous days
Read More
Unsplash
What Self-Care & Beauty Rituals Mean for Trans & Non-Binary People
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016) and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna received a MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM, as well as an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire, BUST, and elsewhere.
Read MoreNot Just Roses & Regrets, Tattoos Are a Way to Reclaim Your Body
...I decide when they become what they are.
Read More
Via Aurelia Lorca
Confessions of a Dress Hoarder
Love. A good fabric, a delightful print. I have found a name...
Read More
Via @tigermouth
Five Instagram Accounts for and by WOC Pinup Girls
There are many reasons why the pinup aesthetic appeals to women of color.
Read More
Martin Knize
The Things We Carry
Ming-Ying is a human interested in the intersection of art, education, and activism. Her art centers around social justice, the feminine, and all things cute. She is passionate about: Black Lives Matter, Asian Pacific-Islander representation, queer counter-narratives, and educational equity. She also loves cheeseburgers, despite half-hearted aspirations to be vegetarian.
Read More
Clem Onojeghuo
The Car Goes First: On My Father's Death
When I was 12, I came home to discover my father’s car with its doors flung open. From the front seats, two pairs of legs stretched onto the pavement. The radio was on low, and I could hear laughter followed by a clink of glass on glass. This was how my father celebrated an ersatz out-of-body death, five years prior to the real thing.
Read More
Alvaro Serrano
Debunking the Writer’s Block Myth: Create Content Every Day
The biggest secret to writing well is that there aren’t any secrets. Maintaining a blog or writing a book takes the same type of skill, and that’s organization. That means, creating a schedule, an environment, and taking the time to research. When we talk about writer’s block, we are really talking about disorganization and waiting for those “idea” moments to happen. Like lightning, inspiration does strike—just not often and fades before our very eyes.
Read More
Starting from the Center: Magickal Approaches to Protecting Boundaries
For adult survivors of child abuse, boundaries are a lifelong struggle. We are taught early that chaos reigns and that anything can and will happen at any time. We alternate between hypervigilance and radical openness, and our wires are so tangled that we often cannot figure out which of these responses is appropriate in the moment. We spend our lives letting the wrong people in, and lashing out at the right ones, until we become conscious of the pattern and begin working to rewire our own brains.
Read More
Photograph courtesy of Field Day
An Interview with Trinity Cross of Field Day & Friends in Oakland, California
I think about the smell of the earth after it rains when I think about wilderness. I think about wild animals. Speaking personally, I am currently trying to figure out a way to get out of the city. So, I think I embrace these things that make me feel like I'm more a part of the earth, through gardening, or through making herbal products, or through doing rituals with the Moon, or different things that I do just to feel grounded and on the actual earth because, living in the city, I feel like sometimes we get so caught up in the grind of just trying to pay our bills, or trying to be a good friend, or trying to take care of our animals, or trying to take care of our other friends who are upset that we lose sight of the fact that we are actually in the wilds. If we collapsed all these buildings and nobody did anything in a hundred years, then it would all turn back to the wilds.
Read More
Via here.
Body-Positive & Beginner Workouts for Witches Who Hate The Gym
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
I can think of nothing worse than the gym. Full disclosure: I do GO to the gym. And I hate every second of it. I'm also wickedly allergic to the self-righteous proselytizing of pseudo-yogis and workout buffs who believe their workout is the best workout or that I MUST go Paleo, like yesterday. No, thanks, I'm good. Here's the simple reality: everyone is different in their workout goals and abilities, and everyone likes different things. You may love barre, but I find that shit unbearable. And that's OK!
If you prefer to be reading a book (or writing a book) or casting a spell, you can still get your blood going (so, you know, you stay alive). I rounded up some of the workouts I like because the instructors are down-to-earth and fun to listen to. I also tried to include instructors who are body-positive and forgiving, because if you can't do the high kick, don't do the damn high kick.
Yoga With Adrienne
Adrienne is great because she's calm, chill and encouraging — and she even cracks a few jokes here and there. She's still pretty serious, so you'll learn a lot from her and you'll learn how important it is to do this for you. And her 30-day yoga program is the best.
Blogilates 30-day flexibility challenge
I love Blogilates. Cassey is the most lively, lovely, inspiring woman — and every single video she makes is SO thoughtful and quality.
Seated Workout for People With Disabilities or Injuries
It's so important to remember that working out and ableism often go hand in hand. Here's a great, high-energy workout that people can do in their seats if they have some mobility.
Hip-Opening Yoga class
Jessamyn Stanley is amazing. She's super friendly and she busts misconceptions about yoga, making sure her viewers are comfortable and inspired. She has a bundle plan and an app — and you can get it all here.
KymNonStop's Kickboxing At Home Class
I love this woman! She's really fun to work out with — she keeps your energy high, her workouts are easy to do in a small apartment and she will WORK YOU.
Curvy Fit Club With Ashley Graham
Ashley Graham is incredible — she's been working super hard to prove that size is NOT an indicator of fitness or health. She's strong, powerful and super down-to-earth. All you need here is a low-resistance workout band.
Beginner's Belly Dance Workout
This workout is SO fun. Veena and Neena Bidasha, sisters, show you how to do some basic moves and then incorporate them into a workout. I also included another video I love.
Ab Workout....In Bed
If you're in bed all day and NOT getting up....this is it.
Workout for Arthritis
As someone with an autoimmune disorder that causes arthritis, I know the importance of keeping those knees healthy and strong. This video can help.
Standing Ab Workout with 1 Dumbbell
If you hate to workout and are bored by crunches, this workout is relatively easy and fun.
Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine and moderator of its digital community. Her work has appeared in The Establishment, Bustle, Bust, Hello Giggles, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and The Huffington Post, among other sites. She is the author of Apocryphal (Noctuary Press), war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press), Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press). Her work can be found in PANK, the Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, The Atlas Review, and the Ampersand Review, among others. She has taught or spoken at Brooklyn Brainery, Columbia University, New York University and Emerson College. Lisa Marie Basile holds an MFA from The New School. @lisamariebasile
The Baroque Dreamers: Photography by Aitor Frías & Cecilia Jiménez.
Inherited Trauma & Memories That Are Not Our Own
BY CARMEN MISÉ
When we first got to this country I was too young to really understand everything that was happening before my eyes. My memories were patched together like pieces of broken glass, glued with stories I would hear my mom and dad recount. I don’t remember the plane ride, or have no memory of my first day in the US. I do remember starting school. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Izquierdo, my bus driver, Manolo, and Yaime, a girl who immigrated the same year we did, and who is still my best friend close to twenty years later. Memory. Isn’t it a funny and mysterious thing? How much of it is it really ours?
Memories, I mean. I feel as though there are people walking around with memories that belong to me. I once heard my best friend recount something that happened on the school bus. She turns to me in utter disbelief that I didn’t remember and proceeds to recount all I said on that bus ride. A memory I clearly did not possess any more, but should have.
Within this complex structure of memory work, I also believe there are memories that have become ingrained in me, not because I lived then, but because they are memories I have inherited. Scientists in Mount Sinai Hospital in New York have noted “the first demonstration of transmission of preconception stress effects resulting in epigenetic changes.” They are calling it “transmission of trauma to a child via what is called “epigenetic inheritance” - the idea that environmental influences such as smoking, diet and stress can affect the genes of your children and possibly even grandchildren.”
This study looked at Holocaust survivors, and while controversial, it is true that genes are modified by our environment all the time. So if it is possible to inherit “a memory” through DNA, then you most certainly can inherit a memory of trauma in other ways, I thought.
It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I had the words to verbalize what I would later recognize as inherited trauma. In fact, not only the words but the scholarly research of literary professionals who were all saying the same thing, just in different words, regardless of whether they were looking at social injustices in India, Latin America, or Europe. I came to so many realizations as a graduate student, that it’s a wonder I am able to function at all. One realization is this concept of inherited trauma and my memory of soap. Yes. Soap.
For many years my mom would collect the last remnants of bars of soap. The small, semi oval, pieces of soap that once were nutrient rich Dove, Caress or Camey bars. God forbid you threw one out, or let it dissolve and disappear if it fell on the shower floor, by the drain, because you were too lazy to pick it up. This “collecting” was a slow process. Over time, gallon zip lock bags or once I remember a ten pound empty sack of rice, would be filled. Over a period of months, we, my dad and I, but mostly me and my mom, would dutifully fill the container with bits of soap. So much dedication. And with each bit of soap added, a small sense of accomplishment, and a renewed determination to fill it up would drive our drive.
At first I did not quite get it, I just helped. It felt good to help my mom who seemed so determined to collect bits of soap. The colorful array of colors in the see-through bag made it like art project I was only too happy to help reach completion. This went on, without question, for a few years. One day, a day very much like all the others, mundane and ordinary, but special in that it’s on those days when we have our biggest breakthroughs, I asked my mom why she collected bits of soap. She looked at me, and down at the colorful, soap filled bag, after a few moments of silence she said that the soap we saved was going to be sent back to our country. “For what?” I asked. “Para lavar,” she replied. As she explained, I imagined a big tin barrel filled with scalding water, laundry, and the bits of soap I helped collect all this time, and a thick, brown woman, covered in a layer of sweat, standing over the barrel. Detergent does not exist where she comes from. Neither do washers and dryers. Too expensive.
I finally had an answer for something I was doing without question for a few years now. Although I learned to be more careful of the questions I ask, the answers are never satisfying. Surely, she could just buy detergent and sent it over? Or those big detergent soap bars I had seen at la bodega. She could send money too. That’s always an option, I thought. We could walk to the Western Union and while she sent the money I could get a gumball from the gumball machine. I hoped it was a blue one.
Of course, I didn’t understand then that she could not simply buy detergent and sent it over, or just send money. In her mind, what my mom was doing was a continuation of what she had always done, save bits of soap. Just on a grander scale, now that she was in the US and had me to help. When she stopped, I don’t really remember. It wasn't abruptly, but one day, when I realized that I didn’t see bags with soap any more, I knew this had come to an end. Well, at least in that form and at least for her. I, on the other hand, inherited the trauma of not having enough. The trauma of caution. A repugnant feeling in the pit of my stomach when I throw away perfectly good things. I know I am doing wrong and I feel it.
The other day I ran a few errands. I went to the store and I bought a few groceries, along with “un palo de mapear” and you guessed it, soap. As I sat at the kitchen table, emptying out the last quarter of liquid soap into the new bottle, I felt the same feeling of determination and accomplishment I felt collecting bits of soap from wasted bars. And we wonder why we drag with us the history of our ancestors? Why it weighs us down? Why we repeat the same fate over and over? I giggled at myself while I sat there saving the last bit of soap. Had this come full circle? And why was I laughing? Perhaps I was anxious or nervous that I had caught myself repeating this act of trauma. The act of saving the last bit of soap, or detergent, Lysol, olive oil and lotion…. Por si acaso.
Carmen Mise graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelor's in English in 2010 and a Master's in English in 2015. She is currently a professor of composition and literature at Miami Dade College North campus' English and Communication's Department. Carmen was recently invited by the Miami-Dade Public Library System to kick off their Art and Sculpture Lecture Series, where she lectured on the topic of Counter-Monuments. A theory she explored in her master's thesis, and a topic she is still exploring in her writings.
Kalu Ci
One Girl’s Story of Mistreatment & the Illness that Brought Her There
When I was 19, I had another bad flare up of gastroparesis, a digestive disorder which causes paralysis of the stomach. My flare up was complete with incessant vomiting, inability to eat any food or keep down any liquid, and terrible cramping pains and constipation and bloating. My mom and my adolescent medicine doctor confronted me and insisted that I be admitted to either a psychiatric unit or an eating disorder facility. They assumed that if the typical treatment for gastroparesis wasn’t working, there must be more to it than just gastroparesis. My GI doctor figured I had a lot of psych issues going on along with the gastroparesis so maybe if we cleared up the psych issues I would be easier to treat. He didn’t specialize in gastroparesis and had told us he had never seen a case as bad as mine before.
Read More
Filippo Ascione
On Growing Up Christian & the Beginnings of Self-Harm
I guess I was about four and puking in a bucket with a fever of 105, which I heard his mother tell my mother on the phone, and Old Yeller was on. I was trying to throw up quietly because Luke’s dad would be home soon. I tasted a grape chewable. I was crying.
Read More