Gemma Hartley

I spent most of my life assuming I was an introvert, but not a very good one. Then finding out I'm an ambivert totally changed my life!

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.

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?

Clearly, it does not take long for my over-ambition to turn me from a vision of perfection into a train wreck you can't look away from. Behold, my first week of school splendor, versus my second week of school ineptitude.

My six-year-old son got into the car after school and declared he only wanted to have one kid when he grew up.

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

“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.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of th

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.

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.