Think the thoughts, feel the feels...write it down

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the death of my mother, brother, and grandmother.  Many people who know me, may vaguely know what happened, but I don't talk about it often, if ever, because it makes people sad and uncomfortable.  But since it's 10 years to the day, I'm gonna tell the story. It was Winter Break 2003 and my Daddy's side of the family (minus my uncle and his children) decided to take a family vacation to Edisto Island in South Carolina.  Grandma, my two aunts and their children (two girl cousins and two boy cousins), as well as this random guy one of my aunts was boarding arrived at my family's house Christmas day.  We exchanged gifts, packed up a rented 15 passenger van and Grandma's car and we all headed down to the beach.  It was probably one of the most perfect Christmases I remember having; there was such happiness in the air.  And the week before we had gone to Grandma's house and taken family pictures for the first time in y

Today I watched the movie Lovelace ; it's based on a true story of a woman who was coerced into pornography by her abusive husband and who became a pioneer of pornography.  The story of this woman,  Linda Lovelace , was difficult to watch, yet very eye opening.  It shows the struggle that some people who are victims of domestic violence go through in their relationships; why she stayed, how he got away with it, the cycle of abuse .  And just like that, it hit me: I was a victim of sexual assault. People (and up until tonight that included me) associate rape, and only rape, with sexual assault, but The United States' Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women defines sexual assault as " any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted ra

'Becoming' is the name of the women's ministry at my church.  I thought the name was lame and therefore the ministry was lame.  I assumed the name, becoming, meant that women would be learning how to become better mothers and wives, and mainly sweet, submissive, demure women; my having grown up in the South and in the church lead me to believe that women's ministries were about making their women into the Stepford wives our patriarchal society drools over.  It occurs to me now what a stupid assumption that was considering 1) while (some of) the women at my church are wives and mothers, all of them are unique powerhouses of splendor, wisdom, and worth (they are not objects composed of a sexist society) and 2) the woman who started the ministry is one of my favorite people on the planet because she is so real, intelligent, graceful, and a delightful feminist.  While I was realizing the above about my ASSumptions concerning the women's ministry, the name, Becoming, c