https://wordsofwomennewsletter.ghost.io/things-you-can-control/

When you get a message like this, when someone showers you with their interpretation of your actions, it doesn’t just make you feel bad, it makes you question yourself.

She’s caught off guard. She doesn’t understand. She disagrees. She thinks I’m seeing things wrong. Either way, the conversation is being had. I am saying the things I need to get off my chest. She takes it surprisingly well, I think, after she hangs up. Five hours later a text arrives.

“We have a game we play when we’re waiting for tables in restaurants, where you have to write the five things that describe yourself on a piece of paper…”

I can tell by her hair, her posture, the way she’s walking. It was Brittany –the witch (as I now refer to people in front of Emmy) who made my life Hell through middle school and high school.

Cognitive psychologists have found that women are more empathetic than men, and possess a greater emotional range—traits that make fiction more appealing to them.

In a way, reading is a metaphor for how women deal with pain.

https://wordsofwomennewsletter.ghost.io/i-never-though-id-say-this/

Maybe it’s a thirty-something thing. This new reality that’s hitting me. The reality of THIS IS IT. This is my life. It’s here and it’s happening and I am the only person who can save me.