Women are judged long before we ever understand what judgment is. Our bodies are evaluated, ranked, compared, whispered about, laughed at, or picked apart – often by the very people who claim to love us. And then, as if by some cruel joke, after decades of scrutiny and self-surveillance, we are suddenly told we’re invisible…

There’s a question I’ve been carrying around with me lately. What if joy isn’t something we find? What if it’s something we become available to? For most of my life, I believed joy was largely a matter of circumstance. It arrived with good news, vacations, falling in love, a new home – things like that. […]