Gemma Hartley

My mother called me the morning after the

I spent the better part of two years a frazzled mess over things that ultimately didn’t matter. My child was still growing up perfectly normal, even when he didn’t follow the straight and narrow path set forth by his pediatrician. I was driving myself over the edge for nothing.

I want and need to save some room for myself, to know that I am worthy of a place in the world without the label of mother.

Anti-choice folks love to say that these laws aren’t about controlling and punishing a large portion of the population, they are about the sanctity of life. And life, according to those who are anti-choice, begins when sperm meets egg.

As a freelancer who works from home, I get the best of both worlds as a parent.

When I was a teenager, I felt very certain that I was not a feminist. I didn’t exactly understand the textbook definition of feminism, but I had a pretty good sense from the negative connotation I had gleaned while growing up in a narrowly Christian setting.

Back when I had my first child, back when he was still a baby, I imagined us moving to the mountains. I was thinking about having three more kids, living off the grid, and soaking up every last bit of their wild childhood. It was a fantasy, through and through.

At Santa Rosa Christian School, dancing was a gateway drug. The gyrating, the slow romantic swaying...

It wasn’t the name I would have picked — not originally, at least — but as days turned into weeks, it grew on me.

This straggler struggle is weighing on me! That is, the struggle of having one straggler child left at home, and I’m wondering if it will ever get better.