Christine Schoenwald

I’m riding my bike around a local community center on a Sunday morning.

Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are nearly here. So, what do you do when your family doesn’t celebrate any holidays whatsoever?

One of the reasons that narcissists are so troubling is their lack of compassion and awareness regarding how their behavior affects other people.

Astrologers believe that the positions of the sun, moon, and planets at the time of your birth have a direct influence on your character — so why shouldn't they also have an influence on what you drink when it's time for wine?

My swimsuit phobia started in middle school — that breeding ground of body shame and fear. One minute I’m a kid excitedly putting on my pink two-piece and running into the ocean, the next, I’m avoiding any place where people are known to live in their swimsuits and I might be forced to wear one.

A sad fact: Many men who are sexually attracted to fat women are ashamed of it. We need to talk about men who want sex with fat women but won't date them.

I know there are far worse injustices happening in the world, but getting weighed in front of people smacks of fat-shaming, and feels incredibly invasive.

When the formerly fat spoke of their hardships, I didn’t take them seriously. I thought that without the problem of weight, their lives must be perfect.

I still went to the painful place of being fat-shamed and decided that was why he had refused to kiss me. The pain never fully went away.

Before I started to write for Ravishly, I never used the word fat, and I rarely mentioned by body-type. But since then, I’ve tried to be more honest and have worked towards self-acceptance which includes coming to terms and owning the word fat.