Kristi Pahr

“Is she Black or white?” I asked another mom who was describing a little girl in her son’s class that she thought my family might know.

I found my first gray hair when I was 12 years old. Twelve. I had gray hair before I had a period.

I’m not a TV person. I used to be, but not so much anymore.

Soundgarden was part of something bigger, something that changed everything.

I’m frazzled, y’all; I’m a mess. I’m a basketcase of anxiety and stress and I need to chill.

My version of self-care is a little less “best life” and a little more “no life”, but it works for me.

I know how it feels to not contribute financially to the household. I know how it feels to be completely dependent on someone else for my financial stability. I know how it feels to know that if something dreadful and unthinkable happened, I’d be completely destitute. And it’s terrifying.

As a mother of boys, I find this trend disturbing. Yes, we need to build up our girls. We need to empower them and teach them that they are capable and viable and powerful — that they are smart and that they matter. But we cannot devalue our boys in the process.

These women are from all over the world. They are from different socioeconomic brackets. Their assaults took place during different times over the last 35 years. The victims are completely different, but the stories are all so similar. Victims of assault, rape, harassment, coming forward, being brave and telling the truth, and being stigmatized, ostracized, blamed, ignored, ridiculed. People they love, people they trust, people whose job it is to protect them, blaming them for their assault. It’s common. Almost expected. That women are assaulted, harassed by men, is a given in our culture. That women are blamed is standard procedure. Is it really any wonder that the majority of sexual assaults go unreported? Is it really shocking that a woman would want to save herself additional trauma?

I’m lazy as hell, you guys. I know it’s true and I’m not particularly ashamed.