Anonymous

Yelling. Throwing things. Name-calling. The only thing that holds me back from calling my teenager’s behavior abuse is that they are my child.

While I may not get flowers on Mother’s Day, I live with the daily responsibilities that go along with the adulting of parenthood as a full-time caregiver.

Unlike before, pleasuring myself isn’t a daily or weekly thing. But I'm also not ashamed anymore. As an adult woman, I have granted myself full permission.

Moments after this big reveal, as I sat with the knowledge that I was the mother of a queer daughter, we heard about the man in Los Angeles being stopped on his way to Pride with guns and bombs, and I suddenly realized that my daughter was now one of the millions of people at risk because of vile and unreasonable hatred about non-straight sexuality.

Like too many others out there, we have a father who gave us some of his genes and not a whole lot more. Specifically, my father is an alcoholic — has been for the entirety of his adult life.

My own father was, and still is an alcoholic, and is no longer a part of my life. Although he was never violent, his alcoholism still deeply affected and damaged our family, and me.

It was all going well . . . until the SWAT team arrived.

What's more dangerous — meeting people on the Internet or meeting people in real life?

Being a human is hard. Being a human with an eating disorder is inexplicably hard. Every time I think I have control over the situation, my eating disorder pulls a fast one on me and reminds me what is really in charge — food and exercise.

In my checkered past, long before I was a member of the PTA, I sometimes worked behind the scenes in X-rated films