Michaela Mitchell

I can't decide which school of thought is more annoying. “Lose weight, get healthy, don't be a drain on society, and finally have the best, most perfect life once you're skinny!” or “Screw what people think! Be comfortable in your own skin! Don't ever change because change equals conformity!”

I don't know if it's because I've lived in the deep South my entire life or if it's a generational thing. I do know that I was raised to “act like a lady” — always. Good girls didn't say certain things or look a certain way. We didn't raise our voices or argue with authority figures, and we apologized – a lot.

Ah, January of a new year. Time to wake up a completely different person from the woman I was in 2015, including: 30 pounds lighter by February! I call bullshit.

How many times have you opened your mouth only to hear your parents instead? This happens to me all the time . . .

You turn your back to deal with a crying toddler (I mean, answer a customer's question) and when you look back, every single shirt is unfolded and on the floor. Just at that moment, someone else walks by and rolls their eyes and sighs at how “nasty the store is" and wonders why they "can't they hire good people to keep it clean.”

In my family, it's not a matter of if cancer will affect one of us, but when. Right now, breast cancer has center stage in our lives.

I have a completely common and certainly not surprising confession to make. Turning 30 freaked me out.

My journey to acknowledging my guilt and privilege while embracing my feminist view on the world has been a slow, winding trip — with no end in sight.

Older men hooking up with younger women get a bad rap.

Ok, for the record, he's in kindergarten, and for his age, it did not suck. It was a masterpiece of little boy seriousness and hard work, actually. (Of course, I might be biased.)