Joni Edelman

I am tired of taking medication. I am tired of relying on the manufactured versions of the chemicals and hormones my body could — should? — make for itself.

It's #STDAwareness week here at Ravishly. We're kicking it off with this handy chart!

Is that incense I smell? A drum circle in the distance perhaps? Chanting? Herbal potions? Perhaps a cauldron? Could it be homebirth?

Body politics activist. Photographer. Chronic quoter of Monty Python. Unapologetic fat chick.

A weekly trip to Walmart would end in tears — first theirs, then mine. Them pining in the toy aisle. Me saying no. Over and over. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to buy my kids whatever they wanted, it was that I couldn’t.

photo credit: Lindy West (instagram), by

Are the advances worth the trade-offs? You be the judge.

I’m lucky to be smart, to have an astonishingly good memory. Or maybe I’m lucky to be bipolar.

You can work your butt off and still be left with a tummy. Bummer.

By baby three, well let’s just say things are a little anticlimactic, at least where furnishings are concerned. Hand me down crib. Check.