Kristi Pahr

Essential oils have become incredibly popular and can be found everywhere from your local farmer’s market and community festival to social media.

When my oldest son was a baby, my husband and I used to talk about what sports he would play.

“Is she Black or white?” I asked another mom who was describing a little girl in her son’s class that she thought my family might know.

I think we can all agree that there is some messed up stuff happening right now.

Soundgarden was part of something bigger, something that changed everything.

These women are from all over the world. They are from different socioeconomic brackets. Their assaults took place during different times over the last 35 years. The victims are completely different, but the stories are all so similar. Victims of assault, rape, harassment, coming forward, being brave and telling the truth, and being stigmatized, ostracized, blamed, ignored, ridiculed. People they love, people they trust, people whose job it is to protect them, blaming them for their assault. It’s common. Almost expected. That women are assaulted, harassed by men, is a given in our culture. That women are blamed is standard procedure. Is it really any wonder that the majority of sexual assaults go unreported? Is it really shocking that a woman would want to save herself additional trauma?

Life looks a lot different at 40 than it did at 25, and I have a whole new list of things to worry about. It's a very long list, and it makes me anxious on the best day, plain terrified on the worst day, and on a run-of-the-mill day, it just keeps reminding me that I'm clueless about what to think and what to do and how to be grown.