Monthly Archives: February 2014

99 Problems

MIL by Frances Badalamenti

February 12th, 2014 | by Frances Badalamenti

The morning after enduring twenty hours of sober-no-pain-drugs labor, two months after my mother died, I am sitting on the



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  • “I was two years past my last period and in early menopause, thirty-four years old and recently divorced. Learning I was unable to conceive had thrown me into a state of despair. Now, with the world split open, alone in a pitch-black room with bloody feet, I knew I needed to act.” “My parents adopted me. At three months old, they chose and adopted a baby girl called April and named her Alexandria. He and Mama named me after him, his middle name being Alexander. I don’t remember the exact moment they told me they adopted me, but I must’ve been little because it feels as though I’ve always known.” #comics #loss #mothersanddaughters “Queers have the privilege of putting ourselves together; we do not come prepackaged. My gender does not rely on the external narratives we tell about men. If my masculinity is a form of political protest, so is my femininity. Those dykes who took me under their butch wings at seventeen taught me that softness and strength are not in opposition. It’s a lesson that has served me well in fatherhood.” #birth #dads #grief #fathersday #comics #art #poetry #newborns #sleep “Communicating desire and boundaries during a sexual encounter is a varsity-level skill. Today’s sex educators advocate for clear, enthusiastic, continuous consent, and I think I believe in that ideal. But this concept wasn’t imaginable when I was in high school. I was mute for so much of my early sex life, I feel unqualified to teach my girls how to navigate theirs.” #gunviolence #poetry #fear

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