Jody Amable

The neighbors turned their lights off. My dog fell sound asleep. I kept reading. And at 1:03 am, I finished. All was well.

In the aftermath of my mom passing, I've learned to reconcile our rocky relationship with the knowledge that she loved me.

FINALLY someone acknowledges professional boundaries at Hogwarts.

In this time of toy-giving, I'm reflecting on the impact one doll made on me and, I'm willing to bet, a small subset of other girls, too.

A few weeks back, I got looped into an Instagram chat with some coworkers from one of my gigs, who were snarking about the fact that the

If I let everyone off the hook for extenuating circumstances like, “He’s over 50, so he probably just doesn’t know any better,” no one’s ever going to stop calling me “sweetie.”

So far, Deathly Hallows is, to me, about the divide between the living, the dead, and the living who have seen death. Harry and I are part of an exclusive club: Those under 30 who have experienced death. And when I say “experienced,” I don’t mean “witnessed.” I mean really, really felt it, all the way through.

No matter how drunk he is, he can’t NOT notice this. His hand is moving. What do I do? What do I do? Do I politely ask him to stop? Do I yell at him? Do I wheel around and whack him in the face? You don’t know what he’s doing, Jody. Calm down. Don’t make a scene.

I'm 30 years old and stuck in San Jose, the hometown I always wanted to leave. What happened?

Harnessing the courage within myself—courage I didn’t even know I had—to coolly, calmly call this guy out has made me a better human being.