Tag Archives: women

Calling all good aunts, nieces, nephews and friends

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It’s time to revisit the Good Aunt series, and I’ve decided to make it into a larger project. But making it bigger and better means I need your help.

So tell me, if you and I were walking and talking together and stopped to sit here for a few moments, what would you want to ask me? What would you want to tell me? What part of your stories would you want me to share?

Will you join me here for a conversation about good aunts?

Will you join me here for a conversation about good aunts?

I’m reaching out to you today to invite you to sit down with me and share conversations that matter with each other.

If you’re a woman who does not have children, if you’re a niece or nephew of a wonderful aunt who does/did not have children of her own, if you’re a friend of a woman whose story the world should know, I’d love to hear from you.

I’ve created a contact form with some questions to get the conversation started and to learn more about what you want to know about the woman you think of when you think of “good aunt.” The information you submit on the form will not be public. Only you and I will see your responses. (And let me assure you: You don’t even have to be a particularly good aunt or an aunt at all, but I’d still like to hear what you want to know about the topic.)

If the form is too daunting or bothersome for you, feel free to add your thoughts in the “Leave a Reply” section below, or simply email me. And please feel free to forward this post to anyone you think might like to participate. As I’ve said, I look forward to getting the conversation going.

The good aunt on Mother’s Day

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Mother’s Day is Sunday, a fact that wouldn’t have escaped you if you’ve been to a big box store or the grocery store or even the drug store, or if you’ve watched the least little bit of TV or had newspaper department store flyers fall onto your lap as you sit at breakfast.

I’ve seen plenty of blog posts this week about motherhood and mothering and wonderful mothers and mothers in need. I also saw (thanks to Ann Voskamp linking to it from her own blog) a blog post from a woman decrying the practice in some churches of honoring mothers by asking them to stand up during the service. Not because she thinks mothers don’t deserve a special day and a special honor, but because she wants church to feel like a safe place for all women, and some women are non-moms (her term for herself), who need an extra bit of compassion on Mother’s Day.

There are plenty of reasons to love Mother’s Day. Maybe you have a wonderful mother who is still living or you’re a mom of little ones who anticipate making you breakfast in bed and giving you homemade cards with little handprints and too much glitter.

But there are plenty of reasons not to love Mother’s Day either. You’re torn between seeing your own mother or spending time with your grown children. Your alcoholic mother abused you. Your mother is in the late stages of dementia and no longer recognizes you. Your mother is no longer living. You’re just not that close to your mother. Continue reading →

A good aunt’s soap box

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Malala Yousafzai has captured our hearts, prayers and worldwide attention in the past few days. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Yousafzai is the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot by Taliban supporters because she wants to go to school and has spent the last three years speaking out about the right girls have to get an education. Earlier today, she and her family made it to the UK, where she will have access to the medical care she needs to have a chance at recovering from being shot in the head.

Did you know her name means grief-stricken? Those of us following her story have been struck with grief, too, along with a sense of moral outrage that there are men in this world who believe it’s right to shoot a girl because she wants to go to school.

Yousafzai is a victim in a war not her own making, but she was persistent and loud enough to draw attention to herself through a blog she’s been writing since she was 11. Her voice has a power that the Taliban has tried to silence, and I only hope that other voices will join hers and sustain her cause while she struggles for life.

I want all of you with daughters and nieces (and sons and nephews whom you hope will grow up to marry fabulous women) to imagine your emotions if Yousafzai had been one of your own. What weapons would you take up in her fight? Would you fight for her against what so many take for granted: the right to go to school?

It’s easy, in the face of our fresh grief and outrage for this girl, to imagine what we would want to do if we were part of her family, part of her community. But there’s a culture war happening here in the Western world, too, and I wonder if it’s easier for us to ignore simply because there aren’t vans being stopped on the way from school and 14-year-old girls getting shot in the head over it.

I’m speaking of the mainstream media’s cultural war on what it means to be a girl and, ultimately, what it means to be a woman. Continue reading →

Trail Tales

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Most of my friends know that I don’t especially love reading non-fiction. When I pick up a book, I usually prefer to escape the real world and go to a fictional place.

But a dear friend from childhood – the friend I totally and completely bonded with in fifth grade because we both loved reading and loathed field day in equally passionate measure – has enthusiastically taken up with camping and hiking. For months, she kept telling me to read Jennifer Pharr Davis’ Becoming Odyssa, a book Davis wrote after hiking the Appalachian Trail. I figured I’d get around to reading it some day.

The same friend loaned me her copy of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Her prologue begins with her looking out over the trees:

The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep
mountain slope in northern California. Moments before, I’d removed
my hiking boots and the left one had fallen into those trees, first cata-
pulting into the air when my enormous backpack toppled onto it, then
skittering across the gravelly trail and flying over the edge. It bounced
off of a rocky outcropping several feet beneath me before disappearing
into the forest canopy below, impossible to retrieve. (3)

She had me hooked. That was the start of my adventures into trail tales. And because I surprised myself by actually enjoying a book about Strayed’s solo hike, I picked up Becoming Odyssa, too.

My recent reads about thru-hiking

Those of you who know me best may be wondering why I’d even read the stories of women hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail (Cheryl Strayed) and the Appalachian Trail (Jennifer Pharr Davis), given my own aversion to lots of outdoorsy activities and critters. Like stream crossings and big spiders and a lack of hot running water. But most especially snakes. Continue reading →