| | | Existential horoscopes from Melissa Broder, correcting the gender pay gap and more. | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | April 4, 2017 | Letter No. 80 | | | | | | | | | | | | Dear Lennys,
It's been quite a week at Lena D. HQ (and by HQ, I obviously mean my ute & fallopes, as I've lovingly nicknamed 'em). Sometimes I worry that I tricked this group of women into starting Lenny as a way for me to alert large swaths of people when I have a UTI. Whoops! But the truth is you have been my community through the toughest days of my endometriosis, so it seems only natural to share the latest with you.
Last Saturday I awoke feeling "off." Of course, I always feel a little off lately (I mean, I'm a human woman with access to a newspaper). But this was knees-buckling, back-aching, dry-heaving-at-the idea-of-breakfast off. For the past few months, my amazing doctors and I have been trying to figure out a nonsurgical way to deal with my chronic pain (my ovary was adhered to my pelvic floor, pretty close to my rectal cavity), but I'd already had four surgeries over the course of the year, and more intervention seemed pretty excessive.
These painkilling efforts have included yoga (a plus for many things, but un-adhering an ovary from your butt region isn't one of them), therapy (always great, unless you have to cancel cuz your vagina hurts), a holistic diet (well, I guess thin shaming IS real? Sorry for all the times I denied you, blondes of the world!), and even a brief, passionate, and ultimately disastrous affair with vaginal valium (I could see my obit, and I didn't like it).
But last weekend the pain could no longer be denied, and by Sunday night I was tucked up on the eighth floor of a Los Angeles hospital awaiting surgery, my boyfriend and sibling snoring on their respective couches while my lovely nurse Steve administered heavy-duty painkillers and explained that though he's not a Girls fan, The Big Bang Theory is "classic. Totally classic."
My surgery went off without a hitch. Dr. Randy Harris, the man who diagnosed my endo AND used to play for the Mets, worked in collaboration with the brilliant Dr. Tamer Seckin (founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America; we have interviewed her before) to make sure no damage was done to my ovary while he stuck her back in place.
When I emerged, cotton-mouthed, Randy told me something I hadn't expected to hear, maybe ever: there was no endometriosis left. Between my surgeries and hormonal intervention, I was disease-free. That doesn't mean it can never return, but for now, once my sutures have been removed and my bruises have changed from blue to yellow to green to gone, I will be healthy. All that will remain is my long-term relationship with pain, and it's time to get real about that.
Nobody likes pain. It's why self-help thrives and people play Candy Crush all day and we avoid conversations we think will hurt our friends then just start ignoring them instead. It's why we have a major opioid crisis. But what we don't always talk about is the way that pain — emotional and physical — can become our companion. Our constant, unyielding, toxic pal, a place to put all our "if onlys" and "just imagines." If I were healthy, I would do acrobatics like Pink. If I didn't hurt, I'd have more time to examine my unhealthy relationships and I'd say sorry less. If my pelvis weren't always aching, I'd record an album of R & B hits and tour Scandinavia, where they seem to accept that kind of thing.
One night as I moped, resisting food, water, or a walk, my endlessly patient boyfriend muttered, "It's like you don't even want to get better." You can imagine how well that comment went over. But he had a point. A clear one.
My pain — physical — distracted from my deeper pain — emotional, spiritual — and became the ultimate excuse. I had two modes: working and hurting. I was convinced there was nobility in it. There was certainly routine.
Now, because of the unbelievable privilege of having thoughtful doctors, my body has been granted a reprieve. And I'm embarrassed to say that the excitement is mixed with loss. Pain and illness defined a time in my life, the way babbling hysterical heartbreak defined the summer after college and eating insane amounts of Brie after 1 a.m. was the whole of 2010.
That's not enough anymore. If we've learned anything from the past year, it's that complacency has no business here. So many people who suffer will never have the resources I've had. My job is to educate people, to try to change the pathetic lack of resources for endometriosis, but it's also to seize this gift. I'll be more useful that way. We all would be if we unloaded an old ache.
Good thing my Lenny horoscope this month has my back: "Although it can be scary at first, it can be very refreshing to be reminded that the world is much bigger than you: whether that means it is bigger than your plans and ideas for yourself, wider than your beliefs about life, or stranger than what you thought was supposed to happen."
Love you. Thank you. I'm not wishing you only freedom from pain, but rather the wisdom to know when it's time to let her walk alone.
Always,
Lena | | | | | | | | | | | | Equal Pay Day Isn't a Holiday. It's a Call to Fight. | | | | By Maya Harris | | |
If someone wishes you a Happy Equal Pay Day today, tell them thanks but you'd rather get paid. Equal Pay Day — Tuesday, April 4 this year — isn't a holiday we celebrate. It's the day that marks how far into the current year a woman has to work to make the same amount a man made in the previous year. Because women who work full-time, year-round in the United States are paid just 80 cents on average for every dollar men earn, it takes them over fifteen months to make what a man makes in twelve.
The picture is even bleaker for women of color: that 80 cents on the dollar shrinks to 63 cents for black women and just 54 cents for Latinas. So for a lot of women — too many of us, in fact — our Equal Pay Day is months away.
Working mothers, who often need the resources most, bear the heaviest burden. Consider the "motherhood penalty," which leads to working mothers earning even less, or the "triple bind" for mothers of color who stand at the intersection of racism, gender discrimination, and caregiving. This reality carries very real consequences: if we closed the wage gap for median annual pay, black working mothers — over 80 percent of whom are primary breadwinners for their families — would have enough money each year to pay for an estimated four more years of food, three and a half additional years of childcare, or two and a half more years of rent.
I know what those numbers really mean because, for much of my life, I was one of those women. As a woman of color and a single mom at 17, I worked full- and part-time jobs to support my daughter and myself while putting myself through college and law school. When I think about those days, I know the huge difference an extra few months of income would have made in my life — and I was fortunate by comparison. If the bottom had really fallen out in those early years, I could've leaned on my mom, and later, with a law degree in hand, I landed a well-paying job with full benefits. But so many women can barely make ends meet just to survive and have few supports to turn to.
All of this lost income adds up over the course of a career: For black women, it's an eye-popping three-quarters of a million dollars. And Latinas? In excess of a million.
And if we keep going at the rate we're going, it will take until 2059 to close the wage gap for women generally. That translates to more than a century for black women — two centuries for Latinas — to achieve wage parity. We cannot afford to wait that long.
Achieving "equal pay for equal work" is a worthy goal, but it's not enough to close the gap. We need to take on discrimination in the workplace — both explicit and implicit bias — by strengthening our laws, promoting pay transparency, and instituting other critical reforms. But in order to achieve real equity, we have to go further.
We need to address the disproportionate number of women — especially women of color — who are trapped in low-wage work. We have to confront the value (or lack thereof) we place on women's work. We pay dog trainers twice as much as childcare providers, and janitors more than housekeepers. Domestic workers, who are overwhelmingly women and predominantly women of color, are among the most undervalued, unprotected workers in America — it's an outrage that the people who take care of our families can barely afford to take care of their own. And what's more, wages are not only lower for work traditionally performed by women, but employee compensation decreases when women move into traditionally male-dominated jobs. Take, for example, the field of recreation. A recent study found that as women increasingly took over jobs like working in parks or leading camps, wages dropped by nearly 60 percent.
Making progress on women's wages is hard because it requires us to change the way we think about women and the roles they play. It requires reimagining the workplace. It means reconsidering long-standing practices that seem benign but actually reinforce gender inequity, like asking job applicants for their last salary information. If a woman has been undervalued in a prior job, that inequality is perpetuated in her new position too.
We also need to challenge Mad Men–era notions of women as caregivers and men as primary breadwinners and adopt 21st-century workplace policies that reflect real changes in the workforce. Women are increasingly the primary or sole breadwinners for families with children, and many men today want to be more involved in caregiving than in past generations. It's past time for policies like paid family leave and flexible scheduling that keep working women — and men — from being penalized in the pocketbook for shouldering the bulk of their family's caregiving responsibilities.
But for as long as we've known about the wage gap, there have been naysayers who dismiss it as a myth. They claim there's no need for new laws, since discrimination is already illegal, and any differences in wages or salary can be chalked up to women's personal choices or so-called lackluster negotiating skills. Donald Trump claimed on the campaign trail that under his administration, women will make the same as men if we "do as good a job," as if we weren't already.
So we need to be vigilant. Massachusetts's pay-equity bill signed into law last year is a promising sign that there's growing recognition that more work needs to be done. The law seeks to ensure equal pay for comparable work and address inequities inherent in prior-salary matching. And it's an encouraging step forward that many corporations around the country like Gap and Salesforce have begun to conduct pay audits and take other measures to remedy salary-gender disparities within their ranks.
We should also pursue innovative efforts to engage new people in new ways. The Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign in partnership with Love Army just launched an equal pay initiative, which raises awareness and inspires action by encouraging men to donate the difference in their wage gap earnings to women's organizations. (Shameless plug alert: This effort is led by my brilliant daughter, Meena Harris.)
Now is the time to get creative and think big. And I know we can do it because I've seen the energy that exists throughout the country to make it happen.
Over the last two years, I had the honor of working to elect Hillary Clinton for president. Traveling with her on the campaign trail, it was always a thrill when we'd be at a big rally in Iowa or Nevada or Minnesota and she'd launch into a familiar riff: "My opponent has accused me of 'playing the gender card.' Well, if fighting for equal pay and paid family leave is playing the gender card, then …" As if on cue, the crowd would scream along with her, game-show style: "DEAL! ME! IN!"
Even though I knew the line by heart and knew when it was coming, it moved me every time. Hillary had tapped into something real and powerful – the same fighting spirit we saw the day after inauguration when more than three million women and men marched for equality and justice.
We have our work cut out for us, no doubt. But people are mobilized and energized like never before. And with over 100 major corporations signing onto President Obama's Equal Pay Pledge in just the past year, as well as stronger equal-pay laws recently enacted in places like California, Massachusetts, and Maryland, momentum is on our side. If we keep up the fight in our cities, states, and across the nation, I know we can get this done and finally have something to celebrate.
Maya Harris is a lawyer and civil-rights advocate who served as senior policy adviser for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. | | | | | | | | | | | | Stay in the Complexity | | | | By Leigh Flayton | | |
Lynn Nottage is one of our most acclaimed playwrights: she earned a Pulitzer Prize for Ruined, about women caught in the crossfire of civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts; and, in 2007, she was named a MacArthur "genius grant" fellow.
She's also an activist who has a long history of protesting and, as she describes it, "walking in circles and chanting in the cold." She once worked for Amnesty International, and she participated in Occupy Wall Street, as well as countless rallies that began when she was still a child, marching with her feminist mother.
Now a Nottage play is being produced on Broadway for the first time. Sweat, which was commissioned for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's "American Revolution" program — focusing on new plays inspired by moments of change in our history — tells a story that's becoming all too familiar: the halcyon days of solid careers in factories and manufacturing are long gone, and the communities whose survival depends on these jobs have to change.
Nottage was moved to research and write the play based on a 2011 New York Times article headlined "Reading, Pa., Knew It Was Poor. Now It Knows Just How Poor," in which Reading was named the most impoverished city in America. We spoke on the phone before Sweat's opening night.
Leigh Flayton: Have you always been an activist?
Lynn Nottage: My mother was a feminist and a civil-rights activist going way, way back. I think the first marches that I participated in were probably when I was five or six years old: Equal Rights Amendment, fair housing, and Black Power marches.
I remember early on, the Rolling Stones had released an album (Some Girls) in which one of the songs spoke about African American women in a very denigrating way. My mother was outraged and she organized a protest. I'm sort of at the tail end of that generation, so I came of age in the wake of women who had really done a lot of good work to push us forward. It's just very much part of my DNA as a writer and as an artist, this pull to social activism.
LF: There was some criticism of the Women's March and the Day Without a Woman strike that they were for women of privilege. What do you make of that criticism?
LN: One of the phrases that I use is "to stay in the complexity." I think that some of the criticism is that women of color in particular have been struggling and don't feel that some white women of privilege have always been our allies in the struggle. But to demand that we be allies when there are larger struggles … I think there is that tension that exists but, that said, I do think it's important for all of us to participate in things like the Women's March, because there is strength in unity. And one of the reasons that I [marched in New York] is that I didn't see that there was a march about white women or black women — I saw it was a march about women, and about ensuring that our voices continue to be heard, particularly in the midst of an administration that really feels resistant to include a multitude of women.
LF: One of the only pleasant thoughts I had on November 9 was that art and activism were going to go into full swing.
LN: Well, we've got no choice, do we? It's the moment when we really have to begin to shout a lot louder than we have in the past. I think that — you talk about privilege — and I thought one of the privileges we had during the Obama years was to invest in our optimism. And to feel like things were moving forward and, for the first time, to be able to sit back a tiny bit. But I think that now we understand that there is a real urge and necessity for us to keep the fight alive. 'Cause a lot of the things that we are struggling for, we might in the next two or three years see them disappear.
LF: You told Interview magazine your motto while writing Sweat was a spin on Walt Whitman's "Be curious, not judgmental": "Replace judgment with curiosity." While spending time in Reading, Pennsylvania, to research the play, you sat down with white supremacists. What were those conversations like?
LN: I sat down with one man, who we actually interviewed, who had white-power tattoos. So I wouldn't say it was plural. But replacing judgment with curiosity, it's because I think that we all, when we're sitting down across from someone who is different, we bring a certain set of assumptions, and I didn't want those assumptions to prevent me from really listening to the stories that people were telling me.
In the play, this African American man who's been locked out of his factory for 93 weeks, [recalls] standing in a line with a white man who is saying, "I'm not working because of you." And he said, "Guess what? We're all standing in the same line. We're all in a similar predicament." Really easy to pass blame.
LF: For decades, America has been going through what you call a "De-industrial Revolution." You can't count on a career in Michigan or West Virginia, yet we keep allowing the scenario you portray in Sweat to continue — the closing or moving of factories and the subsequent, often brutal, dismissal of workers. How do we keep allowing this to happen?
LN: I don't have an answer to that. It feels incredibly inhumane to me, because we're continuing to push out and marginalize workers without coming up with real alternatives. And I think that, in part, some of it's corporate greed. The one percent sees opportunity, and rather than thinking of the long plan, they're thinking in short terms and immediate gratification.
But I don't think it's just corporations. I think it's all of us. We spend so much time online, and we have all those ads that flash up and show us the biggest couches and beautiful shoes, and we don't really think of the real cost — the human cost — of obtaining those things. And we've not really recognized the toll that it's taking on our workforce.
LF: In the play, a black character gets ahead as the situation goes south, and she says she feels like a target. You've compared this scenario to Obama's election on the heels of the financial disaster, and the first black mayor of Reading getting elected as it became the most impoverished city in the country. The same could be said for women set up to fail, like Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, whose male successor, it was just reported, will make twice her salary.
LN: Oh, God. When I was temping years ago, I had these incredible computer skills that wouldn't be that impressive now, but it was incredibly impressive back then. And I was able to go into the computer, and what I found was that the female executives were making exactly half of what their male coworkers were. I sent it to the female executives, and the next day I got a call from HR, a woman who was my friend giving me a heads-up, saying, "Do not bother coming in because they're going to make a big example of you."
LF: Were you happy to get fired for that?
LN: I was perfectly happy; it totally felt worth it. But it was shocking, because I was just a secretary. I was typing up letters. But I saw how hard people worked, and the women were putting in equal time, equal energy, and in some cases more. It actually hurt my feelings.
LF: In December, you spoke to the New York Times about your impending Broadway debut, saying you were feeling "unbridled excitement and trepidation, all the bevy of emotions that come with something so big that has always been just out of reach." Now that opening night is days away, how are you holding up?
LN: It's like the best of times, it's the worst of times. Just as I was beginning tech, my father got very ill. He lives with us and he's hospicing at home. So it's this incredible moment in which I want to surrender myself completely, and I found that I am divided between family demands and the demands of putting up a show.
LF: Doesn't life always kind of happen that way?
LN: Yes, it does! This is a challenge. I was just thinking there are all these obstacles that keep being thrown in my path that are preventing me from the pure enjoyment of this moment.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Leigh Flayton is a New York City–based writer, editor, and playwright. | | | | | | | | | | | | Songbird Series: Joanna Brouk | | | | By Jess Rotter | | |
Informed by a deep knowledge and love for the world of 1970s rock 'n' roll, artist Jess Rotter was inspired by her dad's vinyl covers and comic books growing up in New York. Now based in Los Angeles, Rotter's intricate hand-drawn psychedelic illustrations have appeared on everything from public murals to album covers. | | | | | | | | | | | | No Man Should Have the Power to Decide Our Fate | | | | By Mattie Kahn | | | |
Within 72 hours of his inauguration, President Donald Trump reinstated the "global gag rule." The gag rule (otherwise known as the Mexico City Policy) insists that the government can't allocate any federal assistance to organizations worldwide that provide abortions, refer women to abortion providers, or even advocate for liberalized abortion policies. A version of the rule has been on the books since 1984, and it has been struck down or revived based on who's in power. But this latest iteration marks a horrific expansion; under Trump, it's not only organizations that receive family-planning dollars that have to comply with the regulation. Now any initiative that receives U.S. health funds must observe the rule or else waive essential aid.
Moreen Majiwa is the advocacy adviser for the Africa Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She lobbies governments and intergovernmental bodies to prioritize women's access to reproductive health care across Africa. Devoted to the pursuit of women's progress, Majiwa has come to believe that a true power balance between the sexes depends on two essential and intertwined realities: economic empowerment and reproductive freedom. Without access to contraception and education around abortion, "if a woman gets pregnant at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, her life choices immediately are narrowed, not just economically, but socially," Majiwa says.
Majiwa warns that this regulation, particularly in its expanded form, won't end abortion around the world; it will only increase the likelihood of perilous, sometimes fatal procedures. But for all the harm it will do, the reinstated rule has only fueled Majiwa's commitment to her cause. If any good is to come from this, it will be, she tells me, a renewed global pressure on governments to write policies that provide for women and families and are less reliant on fickle international aid. It's a sad consolation, she admits. But it reminds her that no man, not even the president of the United States, should have the power to decide our fate.
Mattie Kahn: Before the global gag rule was reinstated, what kinds of obstacles were already keeping women from getting access to the reproductive health care they need?
Moreen Majiwa: The problem, nationally, regionally, and globally, I think, is a conservative attitude towards reproductive health care and particularly towards women's access to abortion. This view creates policies that limit the circumstances in which women can access safe and legal abortions and drives women to seek unsafe underground abortions, which can result in either death or severe complications.
MK: Do you mean the attitude itself is part of the problem? That it's not only a lack of literal access that's hurting women, but the taboo around the procedure?
MM: Yes. The conservatism is not just in law and policy. It's attitude, and attitude does affect — even where [abortion] is legal in certain circumstances — people's willingness to access the service, because of stigma, mainly.
MK: Until last month, how were United States funds used to promote family planning or education around reproductive health care for women?
MM: For years, the United States has been a big supporter of family-planning initiatives, and that has included access to contraception, to quality maternal health care, to post-abortion care, which is needed mainly in cases where women have had an unsafe abortion and then later seek care for complications that arise from that.
MK: Are there initiatives you've seen on the ground that you think have worked especially well in the past?
MM: Clinics like [Marie Stopes International] and [Family Health Options Kenya] are U.S.-funded. They do a lot of work and have access to rural areas, which [public institutions] may not always reach. They provide access to health care for the poorest and [most] rural women. And in some places, without these kinds of NGOs and international funds, women there would not otherwise be able to access health-care services, and reproductive-health-care services in particular.
MK: Obviously, the reinstatement of the previous policy alone would have had consequences, but the version of the rule that Trump implemented now applies not only to organizations that specifically address access to reproductive health care, but to all global health organizations. Did people anticipate that he planned to do that, or was this more dramatic than you expected?
MM: The expansion definitely wasn't expected. The reinstatement of the global gag rule under Republican government was expected, but not this expansion. That's new. And governments and NGOs will have to deal with that.
MK: Walk me through the dilemma organizations and governments are in now. Do they have an option to turn down funds, or is this just inevitable that they're going to have to accept the terms that the U.S. government has now laid out?
MM: They have options. The first option is to [continue to] accept U.S. funds; this means that the NGO or the government involved cannot provide information, counseling, or advocacy for abortion. They can't even refer women to places that give abortions. The second option is to reject, to not accept the funding. In that case, they would definitely seek contributions from other governments, from bigger nonprofits. But it's hard. Given how much money NGOs and even governments around the world receive in U.S. aid, they might not be able to make up the full deficit.
And if they can't, many things will happen at once. They will have to lay people off. They can't provide services in the same way that they did. In some places, they won't be able to provide services at all. They won't be able to stay open. And that will have a knock-on effect on other services: on access to contraception, and on HIV treatment, and the quality of maternal health care that women can access. And even if they can stay open, they can continue to provide services, if funding is uncertain, these organizations don't hire; they don't expand.
MK: So, what happens now? Do we know, based on what's happened before, how this will affect women?
MM: We do know there's no proof that the rule leads to a reduction in abortions. And I would think it probably will result in many more unsafe abortions. In a lot of African countries, the liberalization of abortion laws has been relatively recent; I'd say in the last five or six years. Even then, abortion is allowed in very limited circumstances — for the sake of a mother's health, rape, or incest. Because abortion was illegal before and not enough civic education has been done on the liberalization of the abortion laws, what has happened is that a lot of people still don't know they can access safe abortions.
MK: And if the clinician they see isn't allowed to tell them it's an option …
MM: Yes. If they don't hear about it from their doctor or they don't hear about it from NGOs that do this kind of civic education, they will seek unsafe abortions, done with herbs, sticks, hangers. It leads to severe complications and, in some cases, to death. And this will affect different women in different circumstances. There is no [one woman] who needs an abortion. Women seek abortion for different reasons. They're younger women whose lives would be impaired if they had a baby. They're poor women. They're more privileged women. Some are women in more severe circumstances, because they're cases of rape, incest, and where the mother's health is in danger.
MK: And the global gag rule has no provisions for those cases, yes? They're just lumped in with everybody else.
MM: Yes, they're lumped in with everyone else.
MK: What can women around the world do to help?
MM: They can appeal to their government. Donate to organizations that do this kind of work, so that there is less need for international governmental funds. And just, I think, be more aware of what is happening and context in which it happens.
MK: And since we know these issues affect men, too, what should men in powerful positions, in policymaking, in government, do to make a difference?
MM: These men need to create more space for women policymakers to be involved in this discussion. We can't continue to have these "man-els," these panels of men who discuss women's reproductive rights. Women need to be involved. The best decision that male policymakers can make for women is to include them in those spaces, in which they're making choices about women's reproductive health.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Mattie Kahn is a writer for elle.com. Every day, she is more appalled. | | | | | | | | | | | | April Horoscopes | | | | By Melissa Broder | | |
ARIES
(March 21 to April 19)
Happy birthday to the baby of the zodiac! Allow yourself to revel this month in some of those qualities of nascence: a womblike setting, perhaps, where you let go of trying to control anything. In fact, you are powerless over so much in the world, and now is the time to view that fact as one of beauty and freedom rather than a negative thing.
TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20)
Although it can be scary at first, it can be very refreshing to be reminded that the world is much bigger than you: whether that means it is bigger than your plans and ideas for yourself, wider than your beliefs about life, or stranger than what you thought was supposed to happen. Keep following the path of the big, wide, and strange wherever it leads you this month.
GEMINI
(May 21 to June 20)
It's totally cool to ask for help. People enjoy being of service quite often, because it gives them meaning on the planet. You should know that better than anyone. You like to be of service. Also, while we're here, a gentle reminder that it's also totally cool to not be all things to all people. There is something freeing in the knowledge that it's impossible for everyone to like us.
CANCER
(June 21 to July 22)
Sometimes we are scared to go under the exteriors we have built for ourselves — things we have told ourselves are absolute truth, the ideas we have about our place in the world — because we are scared of what we are going to find in there. But if we don't go in there and take stock, it's going to seep out anyway. This month, start excavating.
LEO
(July 23 to August 22)
As a Leo, it can feel like you have no problems telling anyone anything, that you are an open book, pure braggadocio and no secrets. That may be true of the shinier, louder, even dirtier aspects of yourself, but what about the quieter doubts, the parts that aren't as sexy or flashy, do they ever get any airtime?
VIRGO
(August 23 to September 22)
As Virgos, we love to transform chaos into order, and now might be a good time to do some spring cleaning. I'm not talking about our closets, but our internal worlds: taking stock of some behaviors, beliefs, and/or habits that no longer serve us, and if not willing to get rid of them quite yet, then maybe putting them away in storage.
LIBRA
(September 23 to October 22)
One cool thing is that people really can change, and this includes you. You are not stodgy, you are not stuck, and if we go to the right sources for help, we really can change aspects of our lives that we thought were intractable. But the help is important, because sometimes it allows us to see a third way we did not know was possible. And the right sources are equally as important. You will know the sources are not right if what they offer is more of a threat or a fear-based thought than a gentle suggestion.
SCORPIO
(October 23 to November 21)
If you've been having conversations with people in your head in the shower, imagining what you wish you had said to someone or what you're going to say to set them straight, now is the time to get that shit out on paper. Write it out with no intention of sending it as a letter or an email, just write it. Most of it is stuff you just need to get out of you, and through the alchemical act of writing, you'll be freed from some of the uncomfortable feelings behind it. But you might find that there are one or two things in there that need to be said.
SAGITTARIUS
(November 22 to December 21)
Is there something you've been carrying around for years, a situation you feel badly about that always comes up at a certain time of the month or when you are feeling sorry for yourself? Does it make you feel like a shitty person? Maybe it's just someone with whom you used to have a relationship and never meant to lose touch with or a person you hurt and never offered an apology. Just FYI, this is a great month for you to right a wrong.
CAPRICORN
(December 22 to January 19)
Do you ever get into an argument with someone and realize halfway through that you were actually wrong, but feel like it's too late to concede because you have to save face? This month, save zero face. On anything. Embrace the losing of face in all capacities. You may find you actually have less to lose when you are open to it.
AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18)
You have a powerful intuition; we are all built with one. But the Internet and commerce and politics and fashion and relationships and the pressures of various relationships we engage in and hats we wear can have a blinding effect on our third eye. There are various ways to open it again, but one free way, which doesn't involve any goddess-rebirthing workshops or gurus, is taking more time to be completely quiet and still, with no other intention besides being you.
PISCES
(February 19 to March 20)
This month, think about something that has been freely given to you — whether it be love, friendship, mentorship, clothing, tchotchkes, trust, a cool responsibility, encouragement, an ear. Now give that to someone else.
Melissa Broder is the author of four collections of poems, including Last Sext (Tin House 2016), as well as So Sad Today, a book of essays from Grand Central. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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