Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

To pick up and start saying, again, “It’s been so long since I wrote…!” would do very little but state the obvious and make me feel sheepish even to be updating again.

I spent some time, before writing this, updating the site’s appearance. It had literally not been updated since I ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

Well hello there!

2015 has been just a downright terrible year for blogging. But it was to good purpose: the first half of 2015 was pretty much eaten up by completing my long-unfinished, long-dormant college degree. With final grades submitted and an “A+” (they give pluses now?!) in ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

Every month at my church, my friend Laura and I host a “Sharing Our Stories” evening with a new theme each month, which we attempt - with varying levels of success - to bring to bear on the issue of Reproductive Justice.

We met on on Friday, the 20th this month, just last night. The ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

Hilo, on the windward side of Hawai’i, is “the third wettest designated city in the United States” according to Wikipedia. Hilo overlooks Hilo Bay, situated between the flanks of Mauna Loa, an active volcano, and Mauna Kea, a dormant one. Two years ago, the day we visited Hilo ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

I got my first tattoo when I was 25. In the summer of 1997 I was in a weird place, done with college but not graduated, looking for work, restless. At the time I’m pretty sure I wasn’t all that certain exactly why getting a tattoo appealed to me, but I pawned my high school ring and ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

Earlier this summer, I went back to the University of Maryland at College Park to talk with an English department advisor about finally finishing my degree. (You may remember I had a fit of nostalgia at the time.) And in the spring I’d talked to someone in the College of Arts and ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

I have been home from my dream trip for four days now, and I want - need - to write about it. But it is so difficult to figure out where to begin.

I am grateful for the support of my family and friends as I went on this journey. People who supported me at home and the people who ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

Sometime in the last few months a friend posted a silly thing on Facebook, as often happens. This particular silly thing was a send-up of “get ready for summer!” articles from women’s magazines, where far too much attention is paid to depilation levels and purse colors. I remember ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

My entire life, I’ve been heavier-than-average. I’ve had my times of adorable chubbiness (primarily before the age of, oh, seven or eight), my times of fatness, my times of chunkiness, my times of curvaceousness. My times of picking the language that not only describes my body but ( Read more... )

Originally published at Examorata. Please leave any comments there.

It’s October now, and when exactly did that happen?

September was one hell of a month for me. I feel like I ran an emotional marathon, with perhaps a few spiritual wind-sprints thrown in for good measure. Add a few mental kettle-bells and…basically, you drive a promising metaphor ( Read more... )