advice – Feminism and Religion

It’s been almost two years since I lost someone I loved. The relationship was short, tortured, unhealthy (as all my romantic relationships have been, but that’s another story…) However, I fell particularly hard for this one. When we separated, the pain was unthinkable. I was surprised by how deep it ran. I didn’t know until he was gone how much I really cared about him. I became physically sick, and even now there are days when I only have to bring him to mind to conjure a familiar pressure behind my eyes and in my throat.

Why did he leave? Why did I love him so much? What went wrong? How can I stop suffering from this? I’ve discovered that satisfactory answers are nonexistent.

All I could find were platitudes. “It’s his loss.” “Now you know his true colors.” “You’ll find someone else eventually.” And then there are the hollow religious comforts like, “God has someone better.” Unsurprisingly, these flippancies don’t help much, but they are predictable and forgivable. Continue reading “The Dangers of Learning Your Lesson by Abigail Smith”

Ms. Mentor warned me that October would be tough.

A few weeks ago, I was walking through the library, looking up books on women and pedagogy, when I saw a newer version of a book I’d seen on my sister’s bookshelf: Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. The newer version, appropriately titled Ms. Mentor’s New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia, jumped into my stack of books and invited me to take it home where I read it during the wee hours of the night instead of doing something more “productive.” I’ve always been a fan of advice columns, so I was delighted to find that this book features several advice letters organized in chapters on various topics about work and life in the academy. On page 112, I came across a piece called “My Head is Exploding.” It spoke to me. Continue reading “I’m Tired by Elise M. Edwards”