Kristi Pahr

Essential oils have become incredibly popular and can be found everywhere from your local farmer’s market and community festival to social media.

As a mother of boys, I find this trend disturbing. Yes, we need to build up our girls. We need to empower them and teach them that they are capable and viable and powerful — that they are smart and that they matter. But we cannot devalue our boys in the process.

Don’t be an asshole is my barometer. It’s my go-to for figuring out how to respond to any given situation, big or small, personal, local, or global.

My version of self-care is a little less “best life” and a little more “no life”, but it works for me.

I’m frazzled, y’all; I’m a mess. I’m a basketcase of anxiety and stress and I need to chill.

I think we can all agree that there is some messed up stuff happening right now.

Soundgarden was part of something bigger, something that changed everything.

These women are from all over the world. They are from different socioeconomic brackets. Their assaults took place during different times over the last 35 years. The victims are completely different, but the stories are all so similar. Victims of assault, rape, harassment, coming forward, being brave and telling the truth, and being stigmatized, ostracized, blamed, ignored, ridiculed. People they love, people they trust, people whose job it is to protect them, blaming them for their assault. It’s common. Almost expected. That women are assaulted, harassed by men, is a given in our culture. That women are blamed is standard procedure. Is it really any wonder that the majority of sexual assaults go unreported? Is it really shocking that a woman would want to save herself additional trauma?

It is understood that to effectively and officially attachment parent your child, you need to hit all the markers, check all the boxes, and do it without dissolving into a crying mess on the floor when your baby won’t stop crying and you only slept for two hours and you have to go to the supermarket because you’re out of coffee, but you shouldn’t even be DRINKING coffee and you’re the worst mother in the world.

I have to go shopping tomorrow and I’m dreading it.