40 Years of Title IX

Posted by random olio

1972. It should be called the year of the woman. The first woman to run the Boston Marathon, Ms. magazine launches, and legislation passed for Title IX. Tomorrow, June 23rd, marks the day, 40 years ago when a law was passed that created equal access to sports for girls.

I was not always active in sports growing up. I ran cross country in middle school, and played softball in high school. I was also a cheerleader in high school, but I was never a hard core athlete. I do more now then I ever did as a kid. However, without Title IX, I might not have even had those opportunities.

middle school cross country meet

Think of all the badass women athletes that would not be where they are today if Title IX had not been passed as legislation? Famous athletes, your best friend, or your next door neighbor. Check out this montage of photos being collected, honoring 40 years since Title IX. It is called: The Power of IX – a photo project, and it is quite inspiring!

Thank you, 1972, for being the year that pushed the envelope for women’s rights.

Happy Friday!

“The Me I’ve Become”

Posted by random olio

Last week I wrote about the book: “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” by Jenny Lawson in this blog post. I wanted to share another good quote from her book that really inspired and resonated with me.

Do you know how you look back on your childhood, or maybe your high school or college years and remember embarrassing moments that you know you will never forget? I can think of plenty. There are times when I look back on those moments and cringe. Maybe I cringe because it was not my fault that we could not afford the trendy clothes, that I often had hand me downs, or that my mom would attempt to make my clothes. I think what embarrassed me most was my mom making my clothes as I always felt it was obvious that it was homemade. Now I appreciate so much what she was trying to do. Other times I look back and know that I survived many embarrassing moments and that they actually made me stronger. Which is why I really loved this quote from Jenny’s memoir:

“But most important, I see me … or rather, the me I’ve become. Because I can finally see that all the terrible parts of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me “weird” and “different,” were actually the most important parts of my life. There were the parts that made me me. And this was the very reason I decided to tell this story … to celebrate the strange, to give thanks to the bizarre, and to one day help my daughter understand that the reason her mother appeared mostly naked on Fox News (that’s in book two, sorry) is probably the same reason her grandfather occasionally brings his pet donkey into bars: Because you are defined not by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. Because there is joy in embracing–rather than running screaming from–the utter absurdity of life.” page 308

Do you remember those embarrassing moments of your life? Or the ones when you just felt completely awkward? I still have them. Do you? These days I am a little more bold about those embarrassing moments. Like the other day at work, I pronounced challah bread with the “Ch” at the beginning. I pronounced it phonetically. Does that ever happen to you? Where you may sometimes say something and then realize what you were thinking and what came out of your mouth are different things. And, then I started laughing at myself, when I heard my mistake. I brought it up again later in the week, making fun of myself. I think it is good to do that once in a while. It keeps us on our toes and reminds us that life is funny, people are funny, and even if it is slightly embarrassing (trust me I embarrass myself all the time) to go with it, have fun with the moment, laugh, and move on with your life.

So I leave you with a reminder to be YOU in all your bizarreness, and in Jenny’s words: “Because you are defined not by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them.”

Obesity And Healthcare Costs

Posted by random olio

Obesity and money. Two topics that can be taboo to talk about in our society. Yet they should not be. We should be able to talk about our financial future and our bodies, our health, or lack thereof. These past few years I have become hardcore about my health; what I eat and what I put into my body. I would also add that I have become adamant about what goes into my body via my mind too. I want Chris to make this print for the wall when you come in our front door:

“You are responsible for the energy you bring into this home.”

I think we are all responsible (or need to be) for what we allow into our thoughts, how we treat our bodies, and how we treat others. It all starts with respect. This article I read recently really opened my thought. It is not an article as much as it is an infographic on obesity and healthcare costs.

image from infographic

It is hard for me to even explain here, so you’ll have to click the above link to look at the charts and graphs of obesity costs. It shows me that we have our work cut out for us. How did this happen? How have we as a country become so obese? How has it become the fastest growing healthcare challenge? What are we going to do about it?

My hope is that we start by putting down our iPhones and computers. Actually bring the iPhone, I do not care, just get outside with it and start to move, and move, and move. And stop eating fast food, and processed foods, and preservatives. And start eating natural fruits and vegetables. And start caring about the energy that you bring into your home. This body has to serve us, it has to support us.

Do you think about the energy you bring into your day? Into your job? Your home? Your body?

Finding Your Center

Posted by random olio

I have dabbled in ceramics and pottery over the years. One of the books that I love, still own, and look at every so often is called: “Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person.” The author talks about the ideas behind centering your life, and living in a balanced place. The author juxtaposes centering in life with centering a pot on a potter’s wheel.

one of my pieces…

It is not easy, but with practice, skill, and persistence, a potter can throw a chunk of clay on a potter’s wheel and quickly center it. I remember in college my ceramics professor told us of a blind potter. The potter was amazing at centering because they were not looking at the clay to see if it was centered. They could tell just by feeling the way it spun around the wheel. We spent a few classes trying to center the clay while blind folded. That was an amazing experience to me. It taught me how to approach the wheel in a different way, and gave me almost a quiet, calm anytime I started out on the wheel on my way to centering.

If a potter begins to form the clay before it is centered then two things will happen: either his pot will come out lopsided or it will get so off-center that it will come off the wheel or fall over and the potter will have to start over. So it makes sense for the potter to spend more time in the beginning to make sure that the pot is centered, rather than go fast and have to start over again.

What a metaphor for life. If we just took the time at the beginning of a project, trip, plan, etc to find our center and be balanced we would not have to go back and start over again. If we go off course, we just have to go back to our center. Just as on a potter’s wheel, if we go off-center, we can bring it back to the middle and re-center if needed. This is only if we have not made it so off kilter that we have to start over completely, or if we have added too much water that the clay is too elastic and it is not possible to bring it back to its original form.

The potter teaches us to always go back to our center when we feel life has led us astray. Stop. Go back to center. Sometimes we have to change course. In the end, life falls into place when we start from our center.

Ms. Magazine Turns 40

Posted by random olio

I am a feminist. I believe in any initiative that fights for and honors the rights for women. I first became passionate about women’s issues in college, and that is when I started reading Ms. Magazine. There were times when I might have considered myself a feminazi. For those of you that have not heard that term, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as: “an extreme or militant feminist.”

I no longer consider myself a feminazi, I no longer have a shaved head, and I do not talk about women’s issues in every other conversation, but the passion is still deep inside me. I crave equality for all women. I want a world where a woman feels safe, has the right to decide what to do with her body, receives equal pay, is not abused, is not owned, and is not discriminated against. I appreciate the work that The Girl Effect, National Organization of Women (NOW), Girls, Inc, to name a few do to help empower women and young girls to grow up and stay strong women.

Ms. Magazine was created to bring the women’s movement to print, and I think the fact that it is still in print may mean women still need the printed word to inspire and invigorate their daily life. A quote from Gloria Steinem explains a bit of why Ms. Magazine started:

“I realized as a journalist that there really was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women, and this caused me along with a number of other women to start Ms. Magazine.”

So Happy Birthday Ms. Magazine. Kudos to having Wonder Woman on your first cover. Hopefully over the years all the hard work you have put into publishing Ms. Magazine have inspired women to be powerful superheros and badass wonder women!