Jody Allard

You're 15 years old now. You're not a little girl anymore—even though you wish you were, just a little bit.

I didn't have a fairy-tale childhood, unless it was one of those dark and grim ones that really shouldn't be read to children.

Dear Kylie,

Make no mistake: Josh Duggar is the one and only person responsible for molesting his sisters. But it's naive to pretend that the environment in which he was raised had no impact on his actions.

The ACLU of Kentucky has already filed a motion for contempt against Davis because even after the SCOTUS told her to start issuing marriage licenses, she was back at work the next morning, stonily turning away gay couples.

Short hair is big news this week.

"However, if you've ever met a teenager, you know that roughly 75% of them will never willingly walk into the school nurse's office and ask about birth control. But, even if they do, they still won't necessarily know which form is best for them, and they certainly won't be given the advice they need to dump that player and move on already. That's where us parents come in. Except, of course, that half of our kids won't talk to us about the ins and outs of sex and relationships."

Advertisers don't encourage us to believe that our kids need to make memories more than another toy to wage war on capitalism; they do it because these experience gifts support incredibly successful industries. When we shift our dollars from toys to travel, for instance, we are still supporting big business.

The thing about trauma is that it creates inherently unreliable witnesses. Victims tell as much as they can bear to tell, in that moment, and perhaps even as much as they can remember. Memories can be hazy and dim until the second that the curtain is lifted and the body is thrust back into the moment of abuse. There is no such thing as one way of processing trauma, and there is no perfectly linear path to recovery, either.

ICYMI, half of my home state of Washington, as well as our neighboring state of Idaho, has been or is currently on fire.