Melissa Petro

If you missed my weekly column this summer all about getting engaged and planning a wedding, here’s the highlight reel: after doing

Especially if you’re a woman, people assume you’re hungry for a man.

Arran and I joke that no one wants to go to a wedding, not really— and maybe that’s true, but (perhaps naively) we had thought of the day as a gift to everyone involved, including ourselves.

You may have heard the old joke that 98% of people masturbate, and the other two percent are lying.

If you watch TV and movies hoping to be emotionally moved or intellectually challenged, you know that means you’ll some

Hate hurts us all, but we don’t all receive it with the same systemic intensity. Those of us with the privilege to do so need to push against the borders of what is “permissible” in this society. We need challenge the idea of “normal” — rather than conform to it — so that all of us can live more closely to our truths.

After gaining as much as forty pounds and pushing a cantaloupe out my vagina, I wondered: will my body ever be the same?

Guys, stop eating instant noodles. Seriously, they found lead in them. LEAD. Besides this, our stomachs can not digest them.

Mark prayed to Saint Francis, a patron saint of drunks and (according to Mark) lost causes. Mark wasn’t religious, but he wore a St. Francis amulet around his neck, a gift from his father. Nights when he didn’t come home, I prayed to St. Francis, too.

A couple months before our official engagement, Arran and I had an uncomfortable conversation about getting married. Specifically, my dear boyfriend of two years chose a quiet brunch on one unassuming Sunday to bring up the fact that he was reluctant to propose.