Jody Allard

It's time to gather around the table with the family members you see only once or twice a year (for good reason) and try to avoid stabbing each other with your forks. #Blessed.

The more I told him that something hurt me, the more that he did it.

If you follow Humans of New York on Facebook like I do, you probably ugly cry at least once a day. Right now, they are interviewing Syrian refugees who have successfully completed the multi-year process to become approved to enter the United States, and their stories are particularly heart-breaking.

"It's simple, really. If you can muddy the waters enough, and espouse concern for the rights of those poor defenseless embryos enough, what should be a simple statement about the rights of women to make choices for their own bodies becomes, instead, a convoluted argument around viability and fetal stages that puts the presumed "rights" of fetuses on an equal footing with the actual rights of adult women."

Billboard magazine proved that it's never too early to start sexualizing young girls when they tweeted a picture of two-year-old North West (daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West) sucking on a lollipop with the caption, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Ugh.

While this is, of course, better than excommunicating women for their reproductive choices, it is still founded on the premise that abortion is a sin and that men in power must absolve women of their mistakes. It also continues to paint women as incapable of understanding their options and making autonomous choices for their bodies and their lives.

Through the years, I've learned that our ideologies matter far less than the quality of the relationships we build with our kids. Your rules and my rules may be entirely different, but if we center our parenting around nurturing and compassion for our kids, we will achieve similar results.

Former Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland died yesterday, and with his death I've come to two unfortunate conclusions: 1.) Addiction is a bitch, and 2.) The 90s are officially dead.

It’s been three years since I divorced my mother. The reasons are long and complicated, yet also short and simple. My mother is not capable of mothering anyone, and I am healthier and happier without her.

I wish that we inhabited the world Williams’ image depicts, where women can wear bodysuits and high heels and be considered powerful. But if I ventured into the comments I know what I would find: men saying they want to fuck her, women telling her to put some clothes on, and at least one thinly-veiled rape threat. She wants to be fucked, they will say, with her legs open and waiting. Her power and poise will become an invitation to overpower her.