When I was younger, I didn’t think much about my sex appeal, or if I was attractive or unattractive. I was athletic and exercised a lot. I didn’t overeat. My body never ached or caused me issues. I felt good in my body, and I just did my thing.

However, I did have people in my life who criticized my body. My mother told me my breasts were too small. My best friend’s mother told me I must have worms inside me because I was too skinny. On the other hand, my ex-husband told me I was too fat, and…

Spoiler alert! The women don’t win in the movies discussed in this article.

Women are put through the ringer by society. And there are a few shows I’ve watched lately that portray how women can be destroyed by men.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve watched three shows, either a movie or miniseries, that captures the extremely darkest parts of our culture we must live in as women.

#1 Rape culture is a real thing. Women may go to extremes to punish the offender.

Promising Young Women is a movie about Cassie Thomas, who believes all men, even the “nice guy” is inherently misogynistic and prone to taking advantage of women. She is also enraged…

My husband, Michael Jaqua, recently took me to Sitka, Alaska, where he grew up with his seven siblings. We were hitting all the sites, and on our last day there, we drove up to Harbor Mountain with his brother Matt and Matt’s significant other, Susie.

The four of us were chatting on the drive up to the top. Mike and Matt talked about how they would climb to the top with their family when growing up. The two talked about how this was their mother’s favorite place and how she loved living in Sitka all of those years ago.

My…

When I was younger, I always celebrated my birthdays with a huge to-do. I’d go out with friends, or have a party because I love celebrating life and planning parties. My last celebration was five years ago for my BIG 5–0. I rented out a room at a private karaoke bar and invited thirty of my loved ones to sing, eat, drink, dance, and celebrate.

It was a blast. I loved that birthday.

Of course, COVID put a damper on everyone’s celebration last year and part of this year. I can’t even remember what I did last year, except for…

Many of you may have read several stories about another of Medium’s well-known writers, Shannon Ashley who needs to raise money to cover her $60,000 out-of-pocket costs for a desperately needed lipedema surgery.

It’s another terrible story of how our medical system and, more specifically, how the medical coverage/insurance industry is broken. The system has failed to provide medical care without making us go broke.

I’ve been watching this failed system destroy us for three decades now. I’m so sick of it.

How our medical system broke itself

To give you an idea of my professional background, I’m a registered nurse. My specialty is in case…

I just finished reading Laura Fox’s article “There’s Probably a Reason Your Mom Hated You”: The Retraumatising Messages From Abusive Parents Who Read My Articles. She talked about the estranged parents who read and bullied Laura relentlessly about one of her original articles of looking at estranged parents as perpetrators instead of victims and ongoing “no contact” with her parents. The offensive messages left her mentally deteriorated. I was trying to guess the ages of the readers, and I deduced them to be around my age (about mid-fifties or older).

Laura also mentioned her decision of going “no contact” has…

I’m over it. I’ve tried to use LinkedIn again as a way to share my writing and connect with other writers. But, every time I get onto the site, I’m bombarded with private messages from men all over the world, trying to hook up with me.

Pardon my words, but it’s so fucking annoying.

My relationship status is not on there, and I don’t have anything on my page showing I’m interested in finding someone. Yet, the virtual cat-calling continues.

I add people to my connections list when they invite me. These are people in writing and publishing, digital media…

“I forgot he did that to me,” My friend, Jessica, said the last time I talked to her. She’d been in an emotionally abusive marriage for 25 years before she decided she’d had enough and divorced five years ago. Now, she’s in a relationship with a married man for the past six months.

“How could you forget? It happened last week?” I said.

“I don’t know,” She said to me. “You see things that I don’t see.”

She’d come home from a vacation with her adult children and grandchildren. Her married guy/boyfriend told her he’d pick her up from the…