Della Donna

Issue #15

2008-07-01T23:59:00.003-05:00

*Letter from the Editor

*Interview with a Fabulous Female: Anita Revel

*Health and Beauty: "The Flat Tummy Gospel, Part 3"

*Lit by Chicks: "The Air Beneath"

*Spirituality: "The Moon and You"

*Lit by Chicks: "Spring in January"

Letter from the Editor

2008-07-01T23:58:00.003-05:00

We at Della Donna want to wish all American readers a very happy Independence Day.

This month's issue contains a double dose of "Lit by Chicks" (you thought it was over, but literary chicks abound) as well as the final installment of "The Flat Tummy Gospel."

Enjoy!

- April

Interview with a Fabulous Female

2008-07-01T23:30:00.001-05:00

Anita Revel is a self-described "creatrix, author, mother and wife, web diva, dream weaver, lover of life." She is the author of several books and the woman behind Goddess.com.au, a website that helps today's woman connect with her inner goddess. Anita was kind enough to take time from her busy schedule to answer a few of Della Donna editor April Boland's questions.

AB: What sparked your initial interest in goddesses?

AR: The idea of visualizing a woman via the myths of the goddesses appeals to me. The fact that an ancient goddess has been through the highs and lows of the emotional spectrum makes me feel better about myself as a woman. After all, if a goddess can have an "off day," then it must be alright for a mere mortal to have one too, right?

I first became aware of goddess archetypes in a boardroom meeting about 12 years ago. I was being all corporate and so forth (that is, masking my true Self), when one of the girls from the ad agency referred to a colleague as "a real Persephone." I asked her what that meant and she described a personality based on the myth of Persephone - the maiden who was kidnapped to the Underworld. Her interpretation of the myth was that my colleague was a "professional victim," though I now prefer to describe someone with a Persephone personality as someone who is empowered in both the light and shadow sides of her persona. Using the goddess myths as a way of understanding women's motivations, intrinsic morals and natural behaviors just makes sense to me.

AB: What led you to create the website Goddess.com.au?

AR: The more I looked into the goddess myths, the more parallels I found between them and modern women. I began recording my theories online, initially using Goddess.com.au as a repository for my musings (there weren't any blogs back then, so Goddess.com.au was my journaling place)! It wasn't until 2004 when the Goddess-ence 100% pure essential oil blends came into existence that I overhauled the site and made it more meaningful, content-rich, and above all, fun.

AB: Why do you think it is important for modern women to "reconnect with their inner goddesses"?

AR: We're not the first generation to be loaded with stress. In fact, compared with our ancestors I'd say we're the luckiest generation of women to date. We have the freedom to believe in what is right for us, the room to flex our empowerment and unprecedented avenues for expressing emotions on all levels. The key to doing all of these things with dignity and style lies within having a meaningful and rich relationship with Self. It's this healthy and balanced relationship with Self that I call being connected with one's Inner Goddess. When we're connected with the beautiful, inspired, intuitive, sassy and sacred being we were born to be, life is absolutely wonderful.

AB: What first step would you recommend for a woman who has never thought about such things before?

AR: Take the Goddess Birth Sign test and then read a bit more about your birth goddess, research her mythology and her symbolism, and spend some time journaling to find a connection between her energies and your life. Use her as a role model as you come up against certain stresses or situations, asking yourself, "What would goddess do?" You'll be surprised at how this simple little exercise helps you rally your personal power to make the right choices for you.

AB: Is there one particular goddess who guides you?

AR: I resonate with Kwan Yin on a very deep and personal level. I was raised in a house where fear and control ruled rather than love and compassion, so when I "met" Kwan Yin and her gifts of unconditional, unquestioning, undying love and compassion, I was hooked. I willingly and easily fell into her loving embrace, and she's the one whose energies I recall when I'm in need of an esoteric cuddle. Thinking of Kwan Yin as a role model has really softened me and helped me open up to meaningful connections with others.

AB: What is the most interesting thing that has happened as a result of your journey (with the website, the tour, etc.)?

AR: I don't have "most" interesting thing - every experience that reveals itself to me on this journey, whether painful or exhilarating, has been wonderful. I've learned a lot, and now know to trust that everything is perfect in my life. "Everything happens at the perfect time for the perfect reason" is my mantra when I encounter a blockage, and "gratitude" is my mantra at every other time. I've never been so happy!

Health & Beauty

2008-07-01T23:00:00.001-05:00

The Flat Tummy Gospel, Part 3

by Kristina Marie Darling

Although gaining weight back isn’t necessarily a bad thing, dating remains completely different before and after a successful diet. This aspect of being overweight became the most depressing one for me, and until I made a conscious decision to focus on the English degree I’d taken out a $30,000 loan for, the dating world made me want to stop eating anything that tasted good.

It’s not just the absolute dearth of men who want to date an overweight woman that made finding a boyfriend difficult. As a skinny girl in a miniskirt, some women say that they get no respect, but I found that people are much more humane and considerate to an attractive woman than they would be to a girl who is physically unattractive. Walking through the Delmar Loop one day in daisy dukes after reaching my goal weight on a crash diet, a man stopped me and said, “You look very French. I mean that as a compliment.” This was not an isolated incident. Guys told me I looked nice on a fairly regular basis. When I gained it all back, however, I wasn’t prepared for men to change completely.

When I was still happily packing on the pounds, I was downright astonished when a guy from my writing class asked me to have coffee with him. I’d had my eye on him all semester, primarily because he seemed like the tortured artist type. He had black hair, wore rumpled sweaters, and carried around a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow. (Most people don’t know this, but I pretty much only date brooding short story writers and sulking dark haired men who paint when they’re not too depressed.) When he asked me out, I remember thinking, Someone must have changed the laws of the universe just for me.

He picked me up from the school library on the night of our date in his brand new Mitsubishi and told me when I reached for the door handle, “My car’s kind of… uh… messed up. I had a food fight with my ex-girlfriend in the back seat and when I called the cops on her, all my stuff got even more messed up.” He smiled at me and raised one eyebrow, as though this explanation was the sexiest thing I’d heard all day.

Although he had made some attempt to clean the interior of his car, splotches of grease and flecks of cheese still glistened on the seats and dashboard. I was wearing a four hundred dollar, full-length, black Jones New York coat and tried my best to get in the car without getting nacho toppings and fajita residue on my lovely attire.

At this point, I thought that as an overweight girl I most likely would have to put up with some grief to get a guy, and figured that it could be worse. I asked him, “What kind of music do you like? I love the Smashing Pumpkins, even though it’s not the 90’s anymore.” I smiled and fixed my hair, hoping that I could somehow salvage this date. He ignored me, and droned on about his ex-girlfriend.

I knew that if I had somehow lost the weight before he asked me out, this incident would have never happened. He would have at least shown me a shred of respect and asked if he could reschedule, mainly because he would have been sure that I had other options. But unfortunately, that night, he knew I didn’t. I thought back to happier days of being a size four, when guys would hold the door for me when I walked into Borders and all I had to do was wear a halter top to the St. Louis Bread Company if I wanted a free soda. Not only was I catered to as a thin person, but even basic polite gestures, like guys picking me up for a coffee date after stopping at the car wash, were completely absent from my life when I gained the weight back.

I noticed that my date had pulled out his cell phone, and it wasn’t long before he said, “Uh… my ex-girlfriend left her student I.D. at my house, and I need to call my mom and make sure she picked it up.”

As he dialed, I asked him, “Is this the food fight girl? The one you called the cops on? You mean you’re actually going to give her stuff back?” As I furrowed my brow and tried to figure this out, he kept shushing me and telling me to be quiet.

When he was done with the call, he said, “Sorry. My ex, Susan, is kind of still in love with me. I hang out with her a lot because I feel bad for her. And she always gets pissed off when I won’t make out with her.” He told me this as though every guy has a crazy ex named Susan with whom he occasionally has nacho fights. Then he asked me, “Do you mind if we drive around for awhile instead of getting coffee? I’m kind of traumatized by that food fight, and don’t really feel like going in a coffee shop. And since you live way out in the suburbs, that ride can just be our driving around experience.” At this point, I found myself feeling pretty traumatized as well, so I didn’t object. He made a U-turn and pulled into the Starbucks drive-through, bought me the cheapest coffee on the menu, then began the drive to my house.

Apparently this guy was trying to get out of going on a date with me, and had very thoroughly insulted my intelligence in the process. I went home and ordered cheese bread from Papa John’s, feeling as though I’d sunk to a new low in my mission to find a decent guy. The respect I received from men as a thin person as opposed to an overweight girl remained as different as a canister of Betty Crocker cream cheese frosting and a Weight Watcher’s dinner, eaten alone on a Friday night.

*

I lost the weight and gained it back again in college, too, this time using the ability to get a decent date as an incentive. The day I decided to diet, I realized I also had to choose a diet, which proved more complicated than I’d anticipated. When I Googled “South Beach Diet,” I found that it came with charts of “good carbohydrates” and “bad carbohydrates,” and overall it appeared too difficult to figure out. I remember thinking that if I ever went to a restaurant, I’d look like a loser flipping through my complicated chart to see what I could order. Atkins sounded effective from what I heard from friends and family, but I was still incredulous. I didn’t think I’d survive a diet of nothing but meat and cheese, considering the fact that I’m practically a vegetarian. Besides, I couldn't understand how I could lose weight eating nothing but fat anyway. The fashion model diet (in other words, champagne and cigarettes) seemed glamorous and more fun than what was out there, but I thought it would be hard to keep my grades up if I was partially inebriated all the time and kept taking cigarette breaks. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig sounded doable, but were too expensive for a college student to afford. The advertised seven dollars a week to be a member at some of these places often didn’t include food, weight loss pills, shakes, and metabolism boosters. I’d heard it could cost hundreds of dollars to finally drop the pounds at one of these places. Even the slacker’s answer to losing weight, those diet pills advertised on late night television, were extremely expensive too, retailing for forty to fifty dollars for a one-month supply.

I opted to reduce my intake of food, which seemed simple but proved difficult. On campus, temptation lurked everywhere: the coffee places in the library and at the student center, the cookies next to the cash registers, the vending machines, even the Godiva display in campus store. At times I felt like walking around campus with my eyes closed. The coffee shop near campus proved to be my worst enemy for awhile, and although I had to walk a couple of blocks to get there, I was never disappointed. When I opened the heavy wooden doors and saw the glistening glass case of chocolate chip scones, raspberry sammies, crumb cake, and blueberry muffins on neat little plates, I usually decided it was okay to cheat just this once.

I took the path that snacks tread, and sinned against miniskirts and meal replacement bars, but did not repent. After gaining, losing, and gaining my flabby stomach and thunder thighs, I sat in the coffee shop one afternoon and thought about the whole idea of dieting. It was like I was cursed, because no matter what I tried, I kept gaining it all back. I also thought about the fitness trainers at my mom's health club and how enthusiastic they are about exercising. For me, it was torture. Those perky little women at the gym always said that eating plain granola and plain celery made them feel good, because, after all, you are what you eat. I had never felt that way – for me, chocolate and whipped cream and pizza make me feel better than wheat bread any day. And I knew why I had never been able to keep the pounds off: I genuinely loved food.

After class, I went home and ordered a pizza. I felt as though I’d finally been freed from a health food store.

*

After giving in to key lime cheesecake and the little vanilla cupcakes that they sell at Starbuck’s, I eventually began to perceive myself and the people around me differently. First of all, I knew that the glory of the Flat Tummy Gospel that these fitness trainers preach is nothing compared to the stellar diet deviations I’ve had so much experience with. Also, I knew that most people want to change their bodies, and often spend a lot of time and money trying to get to a thong-worthy weight. Even though it’s tempting to buy thigh shapers and diet pills, I’ve started to realize that a hot body is never, by any means, permanent. I’ve always been a good listener, Bush joke teller, and pasta cooker, and although these things don’t change with cupcakes or age, they’re easy to forget when there are so many swimsuit calendars around. This time, I’m not going to forget. Like Donna Stonecipher writes in The Reservoir, “Inside the body it’s dark. But maybe the bones glow.” And there’s nothing like a candy bar to light you up inside.

Kristina Marie Darling is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of four chapbooks, which include Fevers and Clocks (March Street Press, 2006) and The Traffic in Women (Dancing Girl Press, 2006). A Pushcart Prize nominee in 2006, her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals, which include Janus Head, Rattle, The Mid-America Poetry Review, Rain Taxi, The Adirondack Review, CutBank, The Mid-American Review, Jacket, Redactions: Poetry and Poetics, and others. Recent awards include residencies from the Centrum Foundation and the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts.

2008-07-01T22:30:00.002-05:00

"Audrey"

by Lori Earley

Lori Earley's oil paintings are a combination of classical realistic rendering with a personal element of distortion. This distortion comes from her innate desire to transform her emotions into tangible planes that express what she feels, not what she sees. Painting has always been a means of self-expression for her. Therefore, she paints because she must, not necessarily because she wants to. Subconsciously or not, the figures she paint are a reflection of herself and whatever mood she is in at the time, so every painting is in essence a self-portrait. Each mood is distinct, ranging from subliminal, cryptic expressions to more cognitive states of being and the eyes of her subjects are often the primary focus of expression.

Lori's work is a fusion of personal experiences and influences - moody atmospheres, Victorian-inspired couture, and timeless elements all laced with clandestine symbolism. The figures she paints exist in their own esoteric realm and time, and each painting offers a glimpse into their anomalous world.

You can find more of Lori's work at her website, LoriEarley.com.

Lit by Chicks

2008-07-01T22:00:00.001-05:00

The Air Beneath

by Megan Sebestyen

I say goodbye to the ground
As I fall from the heavy connection
Of gravity pulling me down.
I fall up, free from weight of worry.
Seeing the responsibilities of time's restraints
Slide from my form,
I wriggle my toes
In the free air.
I care not for the Earth
From such a great height.
I swallow in great gulps of this sweetness.
For do you realize I must go?
Soon, this free moment will fall from under my feet,
Sucked back down by gravity's firm fist.
I will be forced to depart, down,
To the lowly ground.

Megan Sebestyen is a student at The University of La Verne in Southern California, pursuing a degree in Journalism and Creative Writing. Having always loved to write, she aspires to work on a magazine staff. Her work has appeared in The Durango Herald, The El Diablo, and Escape Artist Travel Magazine.

Spirituality

2008-07-01T21:30:00.003-05:00

The Moon and You

by Jenni Piech

Have you ever seen one of those films or TV programs where a group of young, usually naked witches get together at the full Moon and start dancing around in the moonlight? Ever felt the urge to join in? Well, maybe you haven’t, but if (like me) you have, don’t worry, it’s perfectly natural. Throughout history and in many different cultures the Moon has always been strongly linked to female energy. In ancient beliefs the Moon was seen as the symbol for the Goddess, and many modern-day Pagans and Wiccans still celebrate this connection between the Moon and feminine power. Yet many of us non-witchy type folk probably don't know much about the changing phases of the Moon and the effects they have on us. Women today seem out of sync with our traditional source of feminine energy and magic.

The Moon symbolizes the universally fundamental cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth. Likewise, women also experience phases depending on where we are in our menstrual cycle. We find ourselves influenced emotionally by our hormones, and our experience of ourselves and others can vary quite noticeably. (I'm sure our partners would agree!)

It is generally believed that menstrual cycles coincide with the cycles of the Moon and that, before electricity became so popular, most women cycled together. Although this is no longer the case, it is interesting to note that it takes the Moon 28-29 days to complete a full orbit around the Earth - the exact length of time between the average woman’s cycles.

Many ancient cultures revered and celebrated the link between women and the Moon, leading to the creation of numerous myths and legends about Moon Goddesses. These Goddess stories feature in Chinese, Greek, Native American, Aztec, Mayan and Celtic legend, just to name a few. I particularly like the story of the Mayan Moon Goddess, Ix Chel. One myth states that the Sun was her lover, but that her grandfather was very upset with this and threw lightning at her out of jealousy, killing her. Dragonflies sang over her for 183 days until she awoke and followed the Sun back to his palace. Soon after, the Sun also became jealous of Ix Chel, thinking that she was having an affair with his brother, the Morning Star. The Sun threw her out of heaven and then persuaded her back home, only to become jealous again soon after her return. It is said that Ix Chel was angered by the behavior of the Sun and went off into the night, remaining invisible whenever the Sun comes around. She is also said to nurse women of Earth through pregnancy and birth.

Today, many women still find comfort in an awareness of their spiritual and emotional link with the Moon. It can almost feel as if the Moon is a kind of guardian – a presence who watches over us during the different phases of our lives. It can also help to remind us that our menstrual cycles do not always need to be seen as a burden. Rather, we are part of the many cycles which happen around our planet and within the entire universe!

Jenni Piech began freelance writing in 2006 and has been published in various online magazines, including Nuts4Chic.com. She is now working on her second novel, a project which involves a lot of research, which is good because it makes her feel all clever. She lives in a cozy cottage in south-east England with her fiancé, Tim, and their cat, Cheesecake. Jenni can be reached via e-mail or MySpace.

2008-07-01T19:58:00.003-05:00

"Judith with the Head of Holofernes"

by Lacey Lewis

The artist says, "I was inspired to paint 'Judith with the Head of Holofernes' by the many artists who had painted her before me, especially Artemisia Gentileschi and Gustav Klimt. Not only was I interested in painting this subject to feel connected with history, but also to portray a strong female historical character through my unique vision. Each rendition of Judith has its own flavor, influenced by the artist who created it and the time period it was created in. I am fascinated by this, and will no doubt revisit this and other historical subjects in the future.

For my version of Judith with the Head of Holofernes, I strived to depict a triumphant Judith standing over the severed head of the conquered Holofernes. I chose to create a painting that shows a scene after the event of his beheading, as opposed to showing the gory deed itself, to focus on not only Judith’s daring, determination, and victory, but also symbolically as a universal expression of the desire to defeat inequality and oppression in general."

An award winning contemporary realist figurative artist who paints in a classical style, Lacey Lewis was raised in Syracuse, NY and migrated to Kansas to escape the snow and cultivate a new future. Working mainly in oil, she employs traditional techniques and is committed to the revival of realist standards and archival methods. Her preferred subject matter is the human form, as she senses that all of humanity, throughout time and space, regardless of race, gender or age, share common experiences and emotions. It is therefore natural for her to identify with and communicate through images of people. The human subject forces the viewer to engage the artwork and enables the artist to express an entire range of ideas from the subtle to the intense. As a woman, Lacey instinctively relates to images of women in art. It is vital that her art, at a minimum, expresses the beauty that she observes; often that expression of beauty is an end in itself. Other times, it is used as a lure to entice the viewer to look a little longer so that a deeper meaning may be revealed to them. Through her narratives, she expresses various psychological states and processes, such as the inner turmoil that often ensues after an emotional trauma. Delighted by the variety among humanity, Lacey also work in portraiture, regularly taking on private commissions. You can find more of her work at her website, LaceyLewis.com, and her blog, Lacey's Studio. She can also be reached via e-mail.

Lit by Chicks

2008-07-01T13:32:00.003-05:00

Spring in January

by Nirvan Hope

On a winter afternoon
a rhododendron in full flower,
cherry trees along my road
shower petal blossoms
long before their blooming time.

Every living thing
pushes out of control,
a hurtling trajectory
into chaos.
Human doing?

Or was this planned
before we crawled
from mud and muck,
mere pawns
in a transition time,

tools, slaves of a mineral world?
A world that longs
to end oppression
by all pulsing green
and growing life.

We do not know
the language of mineral.

Even if that was
the original plan,
can we emerge
as pacifier
of mineral force,

protector of
the world of green,
through a balancing
of superb proportion
where all will win

and rhododendron and cherry trees
will learn to bloom again in Spring?

Nirvan Hope is the author of the forthcoming book “Three Seasons of Bees and Other Natural and Unnatural Things.” She writes and takes photographs in the Pacific Northwest and is currently working on a memoir set in England and Northern Nigeria. Her work has appeared in regional, national and international publications. You can find her photographer at her website, Earth Rhythms Photography.

Issue #14

2008-06-01T00:08:00.001-05:00

*Letter from the Editor

*Lifestyles: "Reinventing Myself"

*Health & Beauty: "The Flat Tummy Gospel"

*Anecdotes: "Female Mysteries"

*Lit by Chicks: "Early-Winter Night"

Letter from the Editor

2008-06-01T00:06:00.000-05:00

I have been asked to speak to a group of women writers - a group of which I am a member - about how to start a 'zine. I have tried to outline my points, recalling what started me on this path over a year ago and what has kept me going, despite the amount of work involved and the occasional difficulties.

The best advice I can come up with for them and for any of you out there interested in starting something new is to always keep the goal in mind. Remembering why you are doing what you are doing will help you to keep doing it! Any time I am weary, I think of all of the women whose voices are being heard here, as well as all of the people - myself included! - who benefit from listening to these voices.

With that said, enjoy this brand new issue of Della Donna. Kristina Marie Darling is back with the second part of her "Flat Tummy Gospel" series, and we have some inspirational and funny stories for you in addition. Enjoy!

- April

Lifestyles

2008-06-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

Reinventing Myself

by Gayle Boles

I’ve been through some pretty tough situations in my life. I was brutally raped when I was nineteen and at the age of thirty I went into a hepatic coma for three and a half months. I had a stroke while I was in the coma, which left me with a speech impediment and impaired my ability to walk. This led to numerous years of physical and speech therapy, and thankfully, my speech is now understandable and I get around quite well with a little three-wheeled walker.

I am proud to say that I am no longer overcome by problems; instead I calmly look at the lesson I should learn from them. I haven’t always been this way, as I am a recovering alcoholic who has been blessed with the gift of sobriety since July 1, 1980. Back then, the Alcoholics Anonymous program helped me to look at what I was doing to help create the problems in my life and subsequently change my behavior. I learned that sobriety, like life, is a journey, not a destination. I can be excited about each new day or not--the choice is up to me.

I know that God has a mission for me, and I just need to keep my eyes and ears open to understand what it might be. After many years of disappointing members of my family, they have become proud of all that I have accomplished. For example, I have been working for the state of Texas in a job that I enjoy for seventeen years, which has led to financial and emotional independence. Instead of concentrating on the negative aspects of the world, I now focus on what I can do to create a joyous environment. I really can create my own reality by identifying what’s making me uncomfortable and addressing it. If I make the choice to see the beauty of the world and the people around me, I can grow spiritually, which leads to being comfortable in my own skin and life. This is true peace and happiness.

I used to be so concerned with what other people thought of me and my actions. I was always trying to read their minds so I could meet their expectations. I thought everyone knew about every mistake I had made in my life and were labeling me accordingly. That was a very draining preoccupation that kept me from actually experiencing the wonderful things going on around me.

I am grateful to have a whole new life. I am able to give freely of my time and self to other people in my community. People seek my advice and enjoy my company. That’s not how anyone would have described my life before I got into recovery. It is so nice to have been able to change myself and the atmosphere around me. I am now aware of the many blessings in my life and face each day with a joyful heart. This change of attitude allows me to continue growing and blossoming into the woman I have always wanted to be.

Gayle Boles is a firm believer in the idea that life is an exciting adventure. She has been a psychotherapist for close to 30 years and previously worked as a teacher. She loves to travel and write about her experiences. You can find more of Gayle's work at her website, Gayle's Travels.

2008-06-01T00:04:00.000-05:00

"Dust"

by Karen Preston

The artist says, "This piece just came out of things I have read and things I have seen. Ideas and pictures form in my head. That’s how most of my art comes together.

I have always felt that art is magic. There is such an excitement that comes with creating something from nothing. One moment you have a blank space, and the next, there's a new world in front of you. When I finish a piece that I like, it's an incredible high. I can't sleep the night I finish a piece.

It takes between a week and forever to complete a piece. Some come easily, while others take much longer. Like many artists, I feel the ones that come easy are sent to me from somewhere else. Wherever that is, I am grateful for the glimpse inside."

You can find more of Karen Preston's work at her Etsy shop, and she can be reached via e-mail.

Health & Beauty

2008-06-01T00:03:00.000-05:00

The Flat Tummy Gospel, Part 2

by Kristina Marie Darling

As a self-conscious thirteen year old, dieting remained relatively new to me, because from approximately age five, I’d staunchly resisted suggestions from friends and relatives that I lose weight. At first, my parents didn’t care so much about my extra pounds, but merely tried to limit my intake of hot chocolate, jelly beans and ice cream. This set-up changed entirely when my parents joined a new social circle around the time I was ten. As a kid, I lived in the suburb of Ballwin, MO, and before my family moved in, the picturesque little neighborhood had apparently filled up with soccer moms in Versace track suits, middle-aged women fresh out of the Betty Ford Clinic, and men in Porsche convertibles facing midlife crises, all of whom viewed child rearing as a competitive sport.

My dad couldn’t have cared less what ten year old kids were doing on a Saturday night, but this competition really bothered my mom. My classmates’ mothers would talk about their ten year old daughters’ boyfriends, dates, and cute little social lives, but my mom really had nothing to say about me. I preferred sitting in my room with a box of Russell Stover chocolates and a good book. My mom slowly grew determined to mold me into the captain of the cheerleading squad, mostly so that she would have something to talk about with the other parents. My younger brother, Tim, who liked to hide in his small haven of violent video games and caramel, experienced torments of a different kind: little league baseball. I thanked my lucky stars that I had merely been sentenced to being, as my mom put it, “more social.”

One bright, particularly humid Saturday, my mom and I went on one of our weekly shopping trips, which I loved as much as the chocolate truffles at the Godiva store with white frosting on top. When we walked into a kid’s clothing store, my mom pointed to a pair of shorts with daisy flowers on the butt and a matching tank top. She smiled at me and said, “You should wear stuff like this. Things with a little more style, like your friend Cat.” I looked down at my oversized Cardinals jersey and baggy pants, knowing I looked more like a hip-hop star than the preteen model that my mother wanted me to be. “Uh… Okay,” I answered, picking an extra large off the rack. My mom immediately put it back and said, “When you can fit into a smaller size, I’ll buy it for you.” She continued to grin, forcing herself to look happy and cheerful. I thought for a second and said, “Nah, I don’t want it that bad.” Even though I could tell that I’d disappointed her, I knew, even at ten years old, that I had to stand my ground.

My mom also used to invent bribes – a walkman, a music CD containing foul language, or a short skirt that I didn’t really want in the first place – in exchange for a promise to lose twenty-five or thirty pounds. Knowing that it wasn’t my responsibility to be anything other than myself, I refused each and every expensive item. From the start, I couldn’t help but think that when she envisioned raising a daughter, she anticipated something entirely different from me, with my frizzy hair, thunder thighs, and ratty sneakers.

At thirteen, though, things were different. I got picked on a lot more. There was a disproportionate number of skinny blondes at my school, twiggy girls in hip-huggers who teased me daily and called me everything from “lesbo” to “that girl who got hit upside the head with an ugly stick.” My first attempt to lose weight followed, involving measuring cups, Lays Baked Potato Chips and the Spice Girls. One day at the dinner table, I announced, “I’m on a diet,” but I never really asked anyone for advice, mostly because I was embarrassed at being fat. Yet advice came, regardless, from my overly eager mother who told me: “I’ll get you a membership at my gym.” That very day I received a little West County Health and Fitness keychain with my own gym I.D. Since I always feel self-conscious surrounded by body builders and volleyball team captains, I stashed it in my sock drawer and figured I’d say it was lost.

My first day on the diet proved to be the most unbearable, perhaps because I was accustomed to chocolate, Pop Tarts and the occasional slice of leftover birthday cake. I went without breakfast or lunch, had the low fat potato chips when I came home from school, and braved the treadmill, running on the lowest setting for an overwhelming twenty-five minutes. I let my radio play on, Posh Spice wailing from the speakers. I didn’t know how I’d make it through even a month of diet cola and exercise. To comfort myself, I decided it was snack time. I knew that if I had a box of Cheerios in front of me, I’d eat the entire thing, so I carefully measured out a single serving of one and one fourth cups and put the box away. When I asked my brother Tim how to stifle the growling noises that came from my stomach, he told me where he’d hidden candy bars around the house.

I stuck to it, though, and later thanked myself for it. This diet proved fairly successful, and after a couple of months I was down to a size ten. The real weight loss came when I started watching re-runs of “Ally McBeal” to motivate myself, Callista Flockhart’s flat tummy and miniskirt-filled wardrobe being my future payoff. After a few months of the Ally McBeal diet, I fit into a size six, and treated myself to a chocolate chip, fudge coated granola bar. As I chewed, a little voice seemed to tell me: By eating junk food you are warned, and in eating little of it know there is great reward…

*

It wasn’t until I reached age fifteen that I started to realize just how many other people were on diets, even in my own family. For a while my brother was a poor dieting role model. He would solemnly vow to lose weight, run every day, and swim laps in the tiny pool in our backyard, but after jogging one block he’d come home gasping, “Water! Chocolate!” Yet after watching my mom and dad count calories, wincing as they chewed metabolism-boosting bars with imitation chocolate coating, dieting began to seem like a pretty normal thing to do, even for skinny, healthy people. My mom, who wears a size six and exercises daily, once told me, “Not being able to fit into my clothes and having to get the next size up makes me want to diet.” At the time, this statement surprised me, mostly because I’ve never thought my mom needed to be on a diet. I mean, she’s always been fairly thin and I’ve often wondered if she was born without a junk food gene. Seeing her constantly question her appearance, go hungry, and strive to be just one size smaller sometimes made me wonder if a never-ending diet and a lack of self esteem were simply my fate as a female.

While I’m aware that not all dieters are like my mom and some try to lose weight for health reasons, people like that usually still feel good when they can buy a smaller pair of pants. My dad is a good example of this. He’s an Atkins man and for years he relentlessly stuck to his chosen meal plan, eating mostly hamburger patties and cheese cubes. Like my mom, he never seemed to slip. Not once had I caught him in the kitchen in the middle of the night eating potato chips. When I asked him about it, he said, “I diet primarily to keep my blood sugar low because I’m a diabetic.” I’d always admired my dad for sticking to a diet that involved no carbohydrates whatsoever, but didn’t believe he went through all of that trouble strictly for health reasons. When I really interrogated him, he admitted, “It was nice to see the results. I don’t like the process, but the results are great.” I could relate. The one bright Friday afternoon that I got to wear a miniskirt and tank top (and look good doing it) was probably the greatest day of my high school career. Results definitely remain the most bearable part of dieting, but tend to be enjoyed only in retrospect by a lot of dieters. Although I would love to miraculously return to my high school weight, at the time I would have wanted to lose five more pounds, because only then would my tummy finally be flat.

*

But the majority of us are flab, and unto flab we shall return. Most dieters, however triumphant and swimsuit worthy, usually gain it all back. According to the National Center for Health Statistics web site, the majority of Americans, although constantly dieting, are overweight or obese. A whopping sixty six percent of Americans weigh too much by healthcare standards. For me, this slow return to the world of cheese garlic bread, hamburgers, and peanut butter came when I applied to colleges and sat, twirling my hair between my fingers, waiting to hear back. Out of sheer nervousness about what the people at Smith College, Washington University, and the University of Chicago were writing in my admissions file, I checked the mail compulsively, hoping for a decision. I should have known that bringing a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup as I walked to the mailbox each day was a bad idea, and by the time college rolled around, I was a size eighteen. I returned to ice cream sundaes, and the weight returneth unto me.

The reason why I gained it all back? Hunger and stress together became unbearable. Not being able to so much as look at a cheesecake (the death of every diet I’ve ever been on) grew depressing after awhile. If I had to rate my quality of life on a scale of one to ten, without junk food it would have been in the negative numbers. When a person doesn’t eat, it’s also difficult to interact with people. They always ask you why you’re not hungry. With Nutrageous bars (which are basically chocolate covered peanut butter and caramel), a little bit of a social life, and cookie dough ice cream, however, my quality of life rating soared to approximately four.

I was surprised to find that the same thing happened to my dad. He told me, “It’s successful in helping you lose weight, but you get tired of the same food all the time.” My mom also fell from her wheat bread throne after years of dieting. When I asked her about it, she said, “Like they say, you have to change your lifestyle, and I just haven’t been able to give up that snacking part of my diet.” Considering the fact that my mom is a size six, I still didn’t understand what was so bad about her eating habits, so I asked her what her downfall was. “Crunchy, carbohydrate foods seem to satisfy my hunger better than hamburger patties and salads, especially late at night,” she said. I think that’s probably true for most people. My cousin told me about the Hollywood Twenty Four Hour Miracle Diet, which helps dieters lose up to five pounds in twenty four hours by drinking only juice. Last time I checked, the juice was on clearance at GMC, the health food store by my house. There’s nothing like a thin crust pizza, and the dieting industry just hasn’t realized that yet.

My younger brother is the only person in my family who didn’t return to his old weight after preaching the glory of the granola bar. He went on a diet and joined a gym a couple of years ago and all of a sudden he was buff. Out of nowhere, strange women began calling my parents’ house. He had watched “Supersize Me” five times straight and still reminds everyone what’s actually in junk food, and apparently, for him, this was a successful way to lose weight. It’s not for everyone, though, and if you ask me, this return unto flab that the rest of my family experienced isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Although there are people in daisy dukes and exercise bras who like to preach their Flat Tummy Gospel, scientists have begun to find that risks of being merely overweight and not obese are growing less clear-cut and threatening. While the dangers of obesity are widely accepted in the medical community, the risks of weighing a little more than one’s ideal weight are widely debated. Some scientists even argue that there are health benefits that come with a spare tire. In fact, the findings of a controversial study conducted by Katherine Flegal of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that mortality rates are lower for overweight individuals than those who maintain an ideal BMI (Body Mass Index).

And it’s possible to look good without being skinny, too. Within the last few years, several celebrities have spoken out about their body image, telling America that they don’t have to be bone thin to look or feel beautiful. My old favorite, People Magazine, ran a cover story in which a 161 pound Tyra Banks said about her recent weight gain, “I still feel hot, but every day is different. It’s when I put on the jeans that used to fit a year ago and don’t fit now and give me the muffin top, that’s when I say, ‘Damn!’” Acknowledging her own struggles with body image and her responsibilities as a role model for young girls, Banks discourages tabloids that call celebrities “fat,” asking, “So when they say that my body is ugly and disgusting, what does it make those girls feel like?”

Tyra Banks is just one of many women representing diverse weights and body types within the entertainment industry, and it’s clear that cultural expectations regarding weight are changing. People Magazine once reported that Beyonce Knowles, known for her curvaceous figure, lost a substantial amount of weight for a movie role by drinking only a maple syrup concoction. They wrote, “Beyonce Knowles has warned women not to follow her maple syrup diet, insisting, ‘I’m very happy with my curves. As soon as [shooting for "Dream Girls"] was over, I gained the weight back. I would never recommend it to anyone unless you are doing a movie and it’s necessary and you have the proper help.'” This interview, a big change from when Callista Flockhart’s skeletal figure was considered the ideal, shows more appreciation of women with diverse figures than only five or six years ago. More importantly, woman of all weights appear in the media and are comfortable with their own appearances, encouraging others, including the young girls who look up to them, to share their open-minded attitude.

Cautions against dieting run rampant in today’s fashion magazines. In September 2006, People Magazine published an article entitled “Extreme Measures,” calling the thinness standards that I bought into a few years ago “troubling.” The piece addresses both the issue of eating disorders in the entertainment industry and the pressure that employers place on actresses and models to be thin. Quoting eating disorder specialist Dr. Ira Sacker, the article treats this thinness standard as a problem, not a fact of life: “I have a lot of A-list celebrities as clients, both actresses and models, and what they are telling me is that the pressure to be thin has never been greater. Why? Because whoever is thinner gets the job, and the competition is enormous.” Calling these thin actresses “miniscule” and “frail-looking,” the article makes it clear that being thin isn’t as glamorous as it used to be.

The medical community has also begun questioning this glorification of thinness and meal replacement bars. The Washington Post published an article in June 2005 about a study of 2,957 twins in Finland which found that people who are overweight and purposely try to lose weight have experienced serious health problems. Exhibiting higher mortality rates than those whose weights remained stable, the participants in this study did themselves more harm than good by shedding the pounds. Other studies have found that healthy people attempting to reduce their weight often lose muscle and harm their vital organs. Although the benefits of weight loss have been popularized by both the media and the medical community, cultural tolerance for diverse weights and body types is on the rise.

In my experience with being both overweight and thin, I’ve found I just plain felt better at a higher weight. I didn’t have the nagging hunger in the bottom of my belly, the cravings for carbohydrates, or the general feeling of being chocolate deprived that plagued me on every diet I’ve attempted. And I’ve never experienced any of the health risks that I hear so much about. My blood pressure and cholesterol are normal, and although diabetes runs in my family, I haven’t been diagnosed. I’d have to argue that I’ve experienced more health problems on diets than with junk food, and the dangers of weight loss seldom appeared in magazines when I first started watching what I ate. I’ve taken diets too far before and experienced some pretty scary symptoms, including hair loss, chills, insomnia, and severe migraines. These ailments, caused by malnutrition, can be pretty frightening to an adolescent who thinks of not eating as “healthy” and isn’t prepared for something to go wrong on a crash diet.

I always wondered why, if it’s possible to look and feel great without dieting, has weight loss has been encouraged so much in our culture? My take on this popularization of thinness is that it’s a business. I was shocked to find out that Americans spend thirty billion dollars on weight loss products each year, and many of these expensive products have been proven to have few results. I can’t tell you how many times I passed by little canisters of diet pills with bikini clad women on the bottle and was tempted to try them out. In January 2007, MSNBC reported that the Federal Trade Commission investigated some of these products and found that placebos actually helped the dieters lose more weight. The weight loss tycoons couldn’t weasel their way out of this one - they’ve been fined and will pay between eight and twelve million dollars. When I saw the news article, it shone from my computer screen, and a voice seemed to whisper as I munched on some cheese popcorn: And the overweight shall not be judged, for who would judge between the starved and the dieters?

2008-06-01T00:02:00.000-05:00

"In the Woods"

by CJ Metzger

The artist says, "'In the Woods' is an acrylic painting on wood with mixed media elements (vintage collaged papers). It is one of many portraits I’ve been creating that feature women among nature surrounded by various animals and landscapes. I am very interested in exploring human beings and their relationship with their natural environments, creating characters that subtly reveal their own unique stories, and allowing the viewer to interpret them however it moves them."

CJ Metzger paints in acrylics and collage, blending narrative, surreal and whimsical imagery. Her work is increasingly influenced by her 5-year old daughter, fairy tales, and her observations of relationships between humans, nature & the environment.

The daughter and granddaughter of artists, CJ began creating art out of an uncontrollable need to communicate this innate visual energy. In doing so she found that people adored the character-based, folk art inspired pieces and found them unique and endearing. CJ’s career continues to thrive in multiple directions including exhibiting in numerous solo and group shows, collaborating with her artist sister Miss Mindy, designing vinyl toys, and writing & illustrating her own children’s book. You can find more of her work at her website, and she can be contacted via e-mail.

Anecdotes

2008-06-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Female Mysteries

by Jodie Baker

The other day the men in my office began their usual pointless pondering about one of the great female mysteries. The three women in our small company had closed the wall-length window against the 3 degree wind that rages around our part of the country in April. It’s hard to type when your fingers are numb and your coat sleeves keep getting in the way. This caused the men to return to their tiresome round of:

“Women are always bleating on about how cold they are.”

“Why are they always so cold?”

“You buy them a scarf and they never wear it.”

Why anything we say should affect them I can’t work out as they’ve all got that genetic super-trait of selective hearing working perfectly. Still, I don’t like people to be confused, so I felt I had to explain this little enigma to them. Anyone who has ever wanted to know the answer to this particular temple secret, please read on.

1. Hair - we don’t have any. Oh, we have that obvious ‘crowning glory’ men are always banging on about but most of us wander around with legs, armpits ands groins divested of hair. Hair is a human’s natural coat, designed to help us keep all our internal organs toasty. In a British winter, women are like sad, shaved poodles, all because men heard that touching stubble makes you fancy footballers.

2. Fat - we don’t have any. Fashion magazines tout the skinny image, men get indecently excited by it and suddenly there’s a lot of hungry little mammals wandering around who haven’t stocked up for winter. If bears were as skinny and hairless as us, they’d be extinct. Those who can survive where bears can’t really should not be tagged as the weaker sex.

3. Underwear - I think you can follow the trend. I know, I know, thongs are sexier than thermals, but maybe we could marry the two to create the thermal thong with all around heating pads? No?

So men, stop bitching and bring us some tea, we’re freezing over here.

Jodie Baker is a recently graduated history student who now works, like thousands of other women, in a job which has nothing to do with her degree. She loves to read and write about books, and she currently has a column in Estella’s Revenge entitled ‘Sure, I Know the Queen’. She dreams of working in a creative industry and proving her primary school deputy head teacher wrong about his ideas that “not all children can grow up to be pop stars and footballers; many will have to work in an office…”. To further this dream she sells handmade jewelry at Pretty Little Love Objects and details the joys of the handmade revolution at the shop's companion blog.

Lit by Chicks

2008-06-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Early-Winter Night

by Katherine Steiger

A dense fiancé
in a poppy-eyed dress
flutters about a room
in a town, where
even on your death-bed
you’ll have never heard of.
She’s the spring
that came before
and will follow after
your time
among all this.

Turning over
doesn’t help now.
But the thought of sleeping
at the foot of the bed
somehow does.

Kat Lillian Steiger graduated from Emerson College's undergraduate Writing, Literature and Publishing program in 2000. While there she co-edited the campus literary magazine, The Emerson Review, was an Editorial Assistant at Ploughshares and received the college's Best Poetry Evvy Award in 2000. She also has poetry published or forthcoming in The Battered Suitcase, The Big Toe Review and Beeswax Magazine. She currently lives in Leipzig, Germany and teaches at the Leipzig International School, and she can be reached via e-mail.

Issue #13

2008-05-01T04:30:00.001-05:00

*Letter from the Editor

*Politics & Social Issues: "Left Behind"

*Lifestyles: "A Letter"

*Health & Beauty: "The Flat Tummy Gospel"

*Anecdotes: "Runaway"

*Lit by Chicks: "Pleasures of Scotland and of Paradise"

Letter from the Editor

2008-05-01T04:00:00.002-05:00

Happy birthday to Della Donna! We have officially made it past our first year and couldn't have done it without all of you.

This month we are kicking off a series of humorous, poignant Health & Beauty articles entitled "The Flat Tummy Gospel." We also have articles and stories that address war, politics, death, family and the lives of women. I hope you enjoy, and if you do, please drop our contributors a line and let them know!

- April

Politics and Social Issues

2008-05-01T03:30:00.002-05:00

Left Behind

by Emily Fouquette-Hoffman

To B.C. and S.N.
B.C. I’m glad you finally got your butt home for good.
S.N. Bring your butt home for good already, I miss you, you need to meet my kid, and your wife needs you.
I love you guys!

I’m writing a book about my grandmother: a historical novel based on her experience as a nurse in the Royal Canadian Nurse Corps during World War II. The research is going pretty good. Then today when I was watching a D-Day documentary I started to cry…

How do we deal, the ones who are left behind? How and when did all of this happen? We studied all of the wars in school, and now it’s our turn. It is now my generation’s turn to be veterans! My grandparents were veterans, my uncle, but aren’t we too young to be veterans? Then all of the sudden it hit me. When I was younger, seeing and hearing stories about D-Day and other battles made me proud. My grandparents, it seemed, served in the ultimate war against the ultimate evil. Though I knew that they were in their late teens and twenties, it never occurred to me until now that this all took place when they were in the same stage of life that I'm in now. I see kids who can hardly vote, who sometimes can’t even legally drink, go to their graves, and it hits me right in the stomach. I’m married, I have a kid, I have a mortgage; and yet at twenty-four I’m still a kid, just like the ones at Normandy and Bataan.

One of my best friends has a purple heart, a twenty-five year old boy who I have known since I was fourteen. He now has bullet scars, which brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. I still remember him as a sweet fifteen year old kid. He went for his R&R in March, and when I didn’t hear from him for a while, I freaked out. It didn’t help that one of the kids killed in one of the latest attacks was from his regiment. He and I just got back in touch within the past year after not talking for about five years. We’d just been busy, each doing our own things, but I missed him so I looked him up. We’d missed a lot in each other’s lives: our marriages, my kid, his bullet wound. That’s why it scared me so much in these last few weeks, not knowing if he was injured. I almost lost him once, forever, and I didn’t even know it. He wrote to me in an email once, “I have almost died and I have watched people die.” The thought of losing him scares me so much that I can hardly even think about it. He’s not the same person he once was, obviously, and neither am I, but he’s still my friend.

Another one of my best friends always seemed to manage to call me from Iraq when there was a fire fight going on outside. That’s what it sounded like, anyway. I was so terrified she would come home in a box, and when she finally came home for good - unharmed - I was so grateful. I am proud to be friends with one of the few women strong enough to be a gunner on a hummer, but I still hated the fact that she was in Iraq in the first place. (I wanted to slap her for enlisting, except she can kick my ass.)

So how do the rest of us deal? The ones who didn’t join up? I love my friends, for their bravery, for the fact that they are fighting for us in a way. But I am also angry at them for selling their souls to Uncle Sam when they knew that they probably be sent overseas for what is, in my opinion, a stupid reason. When people say that this war is to free the Iraqis from tyranny, I tell them to take a look at the fact that the U.S. is allies with Turkey. Check out Amnesty International to see what kind of things that government does to the people who oppose it. The Turkish government can be evil to their people, but they are on our side while we “liberate” others in similar situations. How does that work again? I am not against the soldiers (let’s leave the raping and murdering bastards out of this because that is a separate matter to me), only the war.

I have even had a few jerks vandalize my car because they saw the upside-down American flag sticker on it and decided that it meant anti-America If they had actually asked, I could have told them that it really means America in distress.

Maybe I am so angry about the fact that people are fighting what I see as a pointless war, as I have stated above. My generation seems to have gone through so much already. Not that we are martyrs compared to other generations, but we have faced different and seemingly new challenges.

After 9/11 my mother, my grandmother and I discussed all of the different situations our generations have faced. I think 9/11 hit my grandmother the hardest of the three of us because it took her back to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We discussed how badly she felt about the discrimination of Japanese and Japanese-Americans, and how people also discriminated against Muslims after 9/11, instead of learning from the past.

We also discussed my mother’s experience with bomb drills in school, how they had to drill in case the Russians dropped the “Big One.” We compared it to all the current school shootings, specifically to Columbine.

The difference between the two situations is that my mother knew who the “enemy” was. It was black and white, Us vs. Them. My generation has no idea who the “enemy” is much of the time. Our drills were lockdown drills, and the “enemy” could be sitting right behind you in math class, ready to blow your head off. In a few years I will have to send my own daughter into that situation; wondering somewhere in the back of my mind if she might not come home.

That is what I mean about my generation seeing so much already. So when I hold my breath every time I see a new headline about dead soldiers, it makes me angry. It makes me angry that the government didn’t learn anything from the last war in the Middle East, which was less than twenty years ago. Yet it is hard for me to worry because I sometimes feel petty. I am not biologically or legally bound to anyone over there, so it makes me feel like my fears are comparatively shallow. I do not risk losing a spouse, child or other family member, just a dear friend or two. Yet I am not bound to them with a different kind of love and devotion, so somehow I still feel left behind.

Emily is a 24 year old mother of one. She is currently a stay-at-home mom and wife who does freelance writing. She is also studying Druidry and Gaelic, and working on two historical novels. She lives just outside Seattle in Washington State, and she can be reached via e-mail.

Lifestyles

2008-05-01T03:00:00.001-05:00

A Letter

by EJH

Dear Grandmommy,

It’s still dark when my radio alarm goes off in the morning. Jolted awake by the sound of a rock musician wailing a tune I cannot identify, I look through the blinds hanging haphazardly from my bedroom window to discover that the sky is ink. Don’t worry – the buzzing lights from the car wash next to my building file down the sharp edges of the darkness somewhat. Throwing the covers from my reluctant body, I get out of bed and pad my way into the kitchen to make oatmeal and hot tea, my two obese feral cats the only witnesses to my morning routine.

Cramped in my dented Honda Civic, the one with the faded bumper stickers, I brave the 4-lane interstate that will take me to work. Sometimes by this hour the sky has turned the color of cantaloupe mixed with a bit of grey. One of the last times I stood in your kitchen, you asked me to go to the store to get you cantaloupes because they were not only in season, but more importantly, on sale. I brought you back two Rocky Ford cantaloupes because you had carefully instructed me that they were the best kind.

A few months later, they moved you to the nursing home. True to form, defiance was ignited in you. It wasn’t simply that you didn’t want to be moved from your home of 30 years to an unfamiliar facility with a faint yet ever present smell of urine and disinfectant; it was that you had ceased to want to live at all. As always, you had made it clear that your present life was not up to your standards. During your time on this earth, many things had not been up to snuff when viewed through your exacting eyes. And others had felt the judgment, the scrutiny. So much so that when you died, their tongues were covered with bitterness as they verbalized their condolences to me. You left a mixed legacy. While no one could deny your integrity as a person, it was all too easy for labels to be slapped upon your history. You were loved by many, but seven years after your death most share the opinion that your merciless ways drove your husband to alcoholism and broke your son down in a way that ruled out full recovery.

But during my commute to work this morning, I have a question I want to ask you. Where did you get that inner core? It was like a solid block of crystal growing inside of you, reflecting light in the most beautiful ways if someone was only paying enough attention to see it. You hung crystals from your kitchen window, and as a child I marveled at how the light would glide through those prisms to produce rainbow patterns on your linoleum floor. Inside of you was a forest of draught-resistant plants. However, your brilliance was not only in your ability to survive. You had a distinct personality in a generation where women were not known for their unique identities but rather as extensions of their husbands and children. You were a wife, yes. A mother too. But you were also you. Outside of the context of family, church and community, you were an individual who stood on your own in ways others did not. You reached beyond what was handed to you. Within your soul, you knew you were capable of more and you exercised that in glorious ways.

Many days, Grandmommy, my life feels like a glass jar of colored beads a child has dropped, shattered on the floor.

Growing up, I remember the dented hardwood floors in the bedroom you shared with Granddad. And the books. Shelves of hardcover books. There was never any doubt in my mind that the books belonged to Granddad. Since he was the man of the house, I assumed him the natural reader, the one who would have possessed the intellect and interest for books. It wasn’t until after he died that I learned all those books belonged to you. You had blazed a trail to college and had become a teacher while Granddad was a bus mechanic, and yet I experienced surprise when I discovered you had been the owner of all those texts and not he.

You died in the summer. To be honest, I barely remember the airplane ride across two states to attend your funeral. I insisted on reading at your service, even though I had not been asked by anyone to do so. Remembering how you had leaned on faith to navigate challenging times, I read from the Bible. I remember numbly getting into the backseat of the limo as we prepared to drive away from the cemetery. Looking back through the rear window, I saw your gray coffin alone under the green canvas tent surrounded by flowers. I felt like we were abandoning you. I think I was the only one who looked back, the only one who needed to keep your casket in my gaze until we had driven so far I couldn’t see it anymore.

Where I live now, the days are usually warm. I bought yellow tulips for Easter, and they are flamboyantly blooming from their little green plastic pot. Canary yellow flames emerging from pale green buds they appeared one day, but soon they’ll wilt, and I may or may not have the will to throw them away. I try not to discard things because they become less than their ideal. Years from now, I will remember the fragrance of the tulips even when ice covers the ground.

Love,

Your granddaughter

2008-05-01T02:30:00.003-05:00

Forgotten

by Andrea Heimer

Andrea Heimer is a self-taught artist and former Montana resident now living in the beautiful Northwest. She taught herself to paint and eventually to silk screen, inspired by the repetitious nature of the latter. Her belief is that art should demand attention and she accomplishes this in her own work with the use of bright colors and bold black lines. Heimer uses her lack of formal training to her advantage by making her pieces unencumbered by visual rules. She loves her husband, her pony, her cat, and Bloody Mary's (her very favorite drink).

You can find more of her work at her website, AndreaHeimer.com.

Health & Beauty

2008-05-01T02:00:00.002-05:00

The Flat Tummy Gospel, Part 1

by Kristina Marie Darling

In the beginning was the word and the word was FAT. A girl from my seventh grade Health and Fitness class had turned sideways in her desk and said to me at the top of her piercing little voice: Hey, fat girl, I know for a fact you’ve never even tried a cigarette, let alone pot, sex, or vodka. She grinned her toothy grin and batted her eyelashes from beneath blonde bangs, practically squirming in her size one jeans.

My mouth hung open. I knew that, for the most part, what she said was true. I’d never been sloshed or doped up, nor had I taken part in a single make-out session or sat with the kids in baggy jeans at the smoking wall after school. Yet I had never cared about being a badass. I felt that the fact that I earned straight A’s every semester canceled out my mundane social life and conservative wardrobe. “Fat,” however, was another thing altogether. Being fat was a curse, a misfortune, and a blasphemy on the glossy pages of People Magazine, which I flipped through each night when I’d finished my homework.

The night before, I’d sprawled out on my bed with a stack of fashion magazines and a glass of Coca-Cola on my nightstand, flipping through the pages of People, Seventeen, Jane, Allure, and Elle. Being the good student that I was, I read every article that night and highlighted the parts I deemed particularly important. My retractable yellow highlighter squeaked across the page as I slurped soda through Twizzlers and popped mini Hershey bars into my mouth. I hoped that by worshiping at the feet of the fashion models, I’d finally be deemed normal by my classmates. Halfway through my study session, I closed the door to my room, trying to take in the nuances and complexities of the highly anticipated 2001 line of Chanel sunglasses.

After about an hour, my mom knocked on my door and asked, “Hey, do you want to go to the gym? Some exercise might be good for you.” She hiked up her pants, which were baggy from the weight she’d lost on some experimental diet she’d invented herself. I thought about my brother, Tim, who’s three years younger than me and was also overweight at the time. My mom never tried to drag him to the health club. Blissfully oblivious, I answered, “No, I still have some chocolates left. I think I’ll stay here tonight.” And with that I cleared the mounting pile of tin foil wrappers from my nightstand into the overflowing trash can in my room.

My mother's thinness didn’t bother me then. I had told myself from age five that brainy girls didn’t have to be thin or beautiful, and that someday I’d be a lawyer or an anthropologist. But I had never called myself “fat.” Being fat, in my mind, was a death sentence.

After the judgment that had sounded forth in the classroom that morning, I knew I couldn’t live with the self that I now imagined. I had grown up surrounded by thin, fashionable aunts and an exercise-obsessed mother, and now I wondered if they thought of me as the pudgy girl unable to put her cheesecake down. My dad’s ex-wife weighed over two hundred pounds, and they talked about her that way. I began to wonder if maybe they slotted me with Debbie, her alimony, and her pants with elastic waistbands.

As I walked to the school bus after class, thin girls with tight ponytails and short wool sweaters swarmed around me like locusts, clutching notebooks and the little sequined purses that had suddenly become fashionable. As I ascended the rubber-floored, cheaply upholstered bus, I made a pact with my refrigerator: In exchange for glamour, beauty, thinness and future dates, I would come to its doors only when absolutely necessary. I would eat fruit and vegetables. Saltine crackers. Food that I could feel rolling around in my mouth but couldn’t taste.

That night I counted out three Tic-Tacs, ate them, and climbed into bed, turning off my radio and the lamp on my nightstand. My stomach already felt as though it was gnawing at itself, but I had left the kingdom of food behind. This diet was just beginning.

*

I didn’t know it at the time, but I wasn’t alone in my pursuit of thinness. Whether it’s Atkins, South Beach or Jenny Craig, every day nearly half of American women and girls are on some kind of diet. Four out of five American women say they would like to lose weight, and many girls, even as young as ten, report that dieting is beneficial to their self esteem. This desire to be skinny among the very young no longer seems to raise eyebrows; even though I was a middle school student, my desire to shed pounds seemed normal to people. If you asked me, however, I would have said that I was the only girl in the world on a diet. My exodus was a lonely one, although I could already see the miniskirts at the end of my journey. Skinny people appeared to have descended on the world like some kind of biblical plague, and I knew that since I couldn’t beat them at getting dates or fitting into clothes, I had to give up my Snickers bars and join them.

Anecdotes

2008-05-01T01:30:00.001-05:00

Runaway

by April D. Boland

My mother loves to tell the story of when I ran away from home. No, I wasn't an angst-ridden teen who could no longer take her parents. I was three, and I did not want to take my cough syrup. After numerous attempts at holding me down, only to find that my mouth was clamped shut so tightly that the thick red medicine dribbled down my chin and onto the kitchen floor, my mother - who was only twenty-two years old at the time - decided to use some reverse psychology on me. "April," she said, "Either you take your medicine or you have to move out." I didn't doubt her. I was too young to understand that she was bluffing. Nevertheless, I went into the other room, picked up my most prized possession - a Rainbow Brite doll - and walked to the front door. We lived in an apartment on the third floor of a large house in Brooklyn, and I opened the door and began walking down the stairs. My mother had to come after me and bring me back. She always laughs when she tells the tale, saying, "I still don't know where you were going." I don't remember the incident but she has recalled it for me so many times that I cannot help but wonder the same: Where was I going? Could I possibly have decided at such a young age that I was going to live life on my terms? Was it really that deep, that philosophical, that courageous ... or did I just really, really hate the taste of Children's Tylenol?

April D. Boland is a freelance writer and editor. Originally from New York City, she now resides in Austin, Texas where she enjoys reading, writing, soaking up culture and taking advantage of the beautiful outdoors that she never had back home. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Della Donna, a webzine for women for which she heartily accepts submissions. Her published work can be found at her website, AprilBoland.com, and she blogs about writing at These Words.

2008-05-01T01:00:00.002-05:00

One Strawberry for Two

by Brandi Milne

Brandi Milne is a hardworking artist. The painted world she has created is laced with innocence, awkward beauty and a sense of great sorrow. She focuses on an emotional connection with her viewers, and seasons each piece with a unique playfulness – a combination she has mastered. Her work can be found in galleries throughout the Los Angeles area, and in other cities across the US. Her first children’s book will be released in June ’08 with baby tattoo books, so keep your eyes on this one.

You can find more of Brandi's work at her website, BrandiMilne.com.