Gemma Hartley

Clearly, it does not take long for my over-ambition to turn me from a vision of perfection into a train wreck you can't look away from. Behold, my first week of school splendor, versus my second week of school ineptitude.

If you were to walk into my house on any given day, you wouldn’t know that I am an efficient and organized person.

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

I felt unique in my passion for martial arts, my affinity for Call of Duty, my go-with-the-flow attitude toward boyish adventures. I wanted to be “one of the guys,” while still retaining the distinction of my sexuality. I longed to be the quintessential cool girl — desirable yet approachable. But in retrospect, all that really amounted to internalized misogyny.

My six-year-old son got into the car after school and declared he only wanted to have one kid when he grew up.

My husband and I have been together for 12 years, eight of them married, four of them teenaged.

My mother called me the morning after the

My resolutions regularly remind me that I don’t think I am enough, just as I am. So this year, instead of focusing on habit changes, I'm more concerned with changing my perspective.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of th

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?