Gemma Hartley

My resolutions regularly remind me that I don’t think I am enough, just as I am. So this year, instead of focusing on habit changes, I'm more concerned with changing my perspective.

Fortunately, when I look back at my childhood, it was mostly happy. I had parents who loved me. I had plenty of friends. I had access to food and shelter and education and more. Yet even with all my privilege, I don't want my daughter to have the same adolescence as me.

My mother called me the morning after the

Mom friends were the ones to whom you were supposed to spill all those dark parenting thoughts. I wanted that mom-magic. I knew it was out there somewhere.

“Feminism” wasn’t a word I heard much growing up. When I did hear it, I equated it with a historical event, not a work in progress. I thought first-wave feminism was a one-and-done deal, and that all the work necessary for women’s equality had already been accomplished.

To be honest, I consider myself pretty damn good at adulting. I’m a great cook, as long as I have a recipe. I’m a self-taught professional baker.

There is a time to be prudent and fair to “many sides” of an issue, but dealing with Nazis is not that time.

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.

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

...[M]en get a lot of praise for the “extra-credit work” they do in regards to domestic labor (the actual house cleaning and keeping work) and emotional labor (the invisible work that ensures the rest gets done) no matter what day of the year.