Gemma Hartley

At Santa Rosa Christian School, dancing was a gateway drug. The gyrating, the slow romantic swaying...

Last week, the internet went into an understandable uproar when a Christian woman decided to take to Facebook to talk about how she is

Again and again I refuse to prioritize, refuse to let anything slide, at the expense of my physical and mental health.

Raise a glass to Friendsgiving - feasting without any sides of controversy or conspiracy theorizing. Friendsgiving is the best of all feasts.

When my son was little, I used to let him win board games a lot.

This straggler struggle is weighing on me! That is, the struggle of having one straggler child left at home, and I’m wondering if it will ever get better.

I wish I had realized there was no such thing as being too young to have mental health issues. That there was nothing shameful about postpartum struggles.

Starting a new year makes me look toward the future, looking at all the choices that lay ahead of me. But it also nudges me to examine my past in a very certain way. It's the time of year I always find myself thinking about the choices I didn’t make — about the life I didn't live.

But I was yet to face the cold, hard fact that my lack of acceptance for my own body, was really a lack of acceptance for all the bodies I had falsely embraced for so long. Could I really love someone else’s ample stomach, when I could not love my own?

How was I supposed to tell my son, who was already preoccupied and frightened by the idea of death, that his new little brother or sister was gone, that I'd had a miscarriage? I didn't know. So I lied.