Gemma Hartley

Raise a glass to Friendsgiving - feasting without any sides of controversy or conspiracy theorizing. Friendsgiving is the best of all feasts.

If you were to walk into my house on any given day, you wouldn’t know that I am an efficient and organized person.

The real reason I’m worried about sending my kids to school is that I’m going to be alone. For the first time in nearly a decade. And that’s scary.

But I was yet to face the cold, hard fact that my lack of acceptance for my own body, was really a lack of acceptance for all the bodies I had falsely embraced for so long. Could I really love someone else’s ample stomach, when I could not love my own?

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

Minimalism is great in concept, especially when you’re looking at someone else’s well-curated life. Declutter, simplify, own only things that bring you joy. This is all well and good for the twenty-something living in a one bedroom apartment, beholden to no one. When you’re a parent, however, minimalism gets a lot more complicated.

“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.

I know it won't be long until he can read the headlines before I can bury the truth. He will learn to read, and then to suffer. Words will haunt him.

My first child’s milestones were elaborately marked, photographed, and celebrated with much fanfare... My third child however? Not so much. His first birthday was a much quieter affair — if it could be called an affair at all.

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.