just even knowing this exists makes everything ok.
(Source: milklotus, via likeneelyohara)
young george told his daddy
“i cannot tell a lie,
i cut down that cherry tree
but lord i don’t know why.”
Mardi Gras
I walk with the daybreak krewes in the Bywater, but I am up before even them. I am sitting on the stoop when it is still so black you need a watch to know that dawn is coming at all. I do not have a watch but I can feel the veil descending, the veil between that I walk through on mardi gras. I smoke a cigarette, not because I want it—I’ve been smoking all night—but because I want the picture of myself this way. I want the memory and I want something do do with my hands. I am watching the sky when it begins to glow blue.
Soon.
A rooster and two and three and a bang against a far off street sign—the first of the Bone Krewe is up.
Soon.
A trumpet. Three shades lighter in the sky and I’ll do it.
Soon.
A skeleton walks by, tips his hat to me. Pale, moody blue now but we are still ducking the forecast of rain. I knock on the door.
“Wake up! Wake up it’s today!”
Now.
“ Except you can’t show a topless woman on TV - and you can’t defibrillate a woman in a bra. So victims of heart attacks on TV are *always* male. Did you know that a woman having a heart attack is more likely to have back or jaw pain than chest or left arm pain? I didn’t - because I’ve never seen a woman having a heart attack. I’ve been trained in CPR and Advanced First Aid by the Red Cross over 15 times in my life, the videos and booklets always have a guy and say the same thing about clutching his chest and/or bicep.
And people laugh when I tell them women are still invisible in this world.
And people laugh when I tell them women are still invisible in this world.
Things I did not know, but should.
(via elfgrove)
This is a post that might save a life.
(via str8nochaser)
My mom worked for 25 years as an ER nurse and is convinced that a lot of women die simply because folks only know heart attack symptoms that occur in males.
(via darkjez)
Society thinks our bodies are so scandalous that it’s better to put our lives at risk than to show us how to stay safe
(via callingoutsexists)
(via justaskashley)
(Source: heatherannehogan)
oh hey here is a video of me and ali liebert. i feel so lucky and so hungover.
The Music Box →
today is the launch of my very first book. i wasn’t expecting to cry about it but this morning as i watched the sun rise, i thought about all the things that made this book and the tears just showed up. i thought about the woman who inspired it, who is gone from my life but whose uprightness, goodness, and strength i tried to capture. i thought about how close i came to giving up on myself, and how the act of writing saved me from my own self-doubt.
i can’t say much about the book itself—i lost all perspective somewhere between the third and fifth drafts—but even though i am critical of my skills as a writer, i will say that i believe in my characters. their names are iris and caroline and they are brave. they helped me be brave too.
i hope you like them.
i’m a realist; i’d only be keeper.
(Source: catbushandludicrous, via heatherannehogan)
