for the ladies
a weary account of daylight savings; an homage to women of wonder, to thee hottie state of mind, and to feminine rage; and three doodles of dolls, from yours truly.
Happy (belated) International Women’s Day, everyone!
This week’s been busier than average for me. On Monday, I effectively ended my 10-month-long sabbatical by onboarding with a new freelance client. It was about damn time — despite my initial internal resistance to doing anything that didn’t involve my couch, I was truly driving myself (and likely my partner) a lil’ stir crazy with all my usual over-thinking and putzing about the house. After all, I was at the point of watching reruns of Antiques Roadshow, so if TV land is any indication… I mean, you get it. Plus, this new team I’m working with has been great so far, so I’m actually really looking forward to returning to work, at least more than I thought I would.
On Tuesday, as I’m sure we all know by now, Meta experienced a widespread outage that disrupted access for hundreds of thousands of users globally for over two hours, due to “a technical issue”. Now, I don’t use Facebook or Threads, and I’m not super active on Instagram, so I wasn’t one of the many people affected by this, by any means. However, I heard quite a few military helicopters above that same morning so with a touch of conspiracy theorist energy in the air, I took the opportunity to momentarily entertain my inner survivalist about it all - which, naturally, led me down a dark online shopping path to purchase items I thought I’d want in case of a cyber attack, lol was I serious? Amazon tells me so. Convenient how that app wasn’t down and my money could be processed. 🤔 So now, I’m the proud owner of an actual radio again, a pair of walkie-talkies (aka my 6-year old wish list to Santa), a power bank solar charger and probably the only truly useful item in an emergency - LifeStraws, amongst other things. Anyway, that was my Tuesday morning. How about y’all?
The rest of it was my norm; twice a week in the gym with my trainer, who I still go to for accountability, and a third work-out solo yesterday. I ran errands and had a few meetings with other prospective clients for hospitality consulting or photography services. I went to a few social events on Thursday and Saturday nights. All normal stuff, but in the last year I’ve learned quite a bit about myself (to be expected, given all the down time) — one thing being, that my energetic threshold only allows for a max of 3 activities, outside my house, per day. I just won’t be my best self doing much beyond that. I also never used to need naps before. I’m too young to be this old! Yet, I blame it on Sunday’s daylight savings, and other heinous events, etc.
On Friday, I started therapy; returning for the first time since moving to LA a couple years ago. And while I didn’t intentionally schedule it to land on this day - of honoring and celebrating the divine feminine - it felt very fitting and mystical that it did.
As I’m new to this particular therapist, I had to complete some intake forms - one of them being a get to know you type of questionnaire. The list of questions included: “What brings you to therapy? What are your goals here? If you are in a relationship, describe the nature of it. Describe your current living situation. What is your occupation, what do you do and how long have you been doing it?”
Aside from what I do and where I live, the rest honestly threw me for a loop (sign #4,372 that this decision was a good one). I don’t know if any of you feel similarly, but sometimes when asked a simple but pointed question, my sympathetic nervous system tenses up and activates the fight or flight response… except I freeze instead. I believe I know myself, so it’s strange to find such an initial stumped-ness in place of my internal reaction, when posed with questions about ones self. What's it all about? After all, I'm really just being asked about what I want. What's so scary about that?
Nonetheless, eventually I managed to deep-breath through the exercise enough to answer the questions with some level of detail and accuracy. Although, I did feel a bit like an alien trying to understand humans when I found myself googling “words to describe your relationship” and rewatching Couples Therapy episodes to determine some strong therapy goals examples. (If you aren’t already watching and obsessed with Dr Orna, I don’t know what you’re doing, like, do you even like therapy?!) Point being — despite all the webs I can spin when overthinking, I don’t ask myself (or others) nearly enough questions. I also don’t then sit with myself (or that person) in silence long enough to truly hear the answer, at least not as much as I would like. Do you?
I Ubered to the appointment. The driver’s blinks were heavy and once his eyelids were closed, it appeared as though he had to convince himself to get them open again. Time slowed to match his unimpressed, lackadaisacal movements. The road is no place for dream wishers. Regardless, I arrived alive. The office was warm, which jogged a distant memory of my first attempt with therapy, back in Toronto. On a cold day, in a cozy embrace, I found my old therapist nodding off once during a session. I laughed to myself - wondering how truly boring and trivial our issues can seem to others at times. I found the common thread of sleepy men a curious one, but had no time to explore further. I hoped this experience would be different, and we got started.
After introductions, a little background context, and attempting to condense my life, my intentions & my challenges into one hour, we surprisingly fit a lot in and magically arrived on a goal for therapy, one that felt really right for me. I told her I have the tendency to be non-confrontational, I gave a few examples. While ease and flow is important to me, and going with the flow has served me and provided many blessings in my life, I’ve also recently considered the ways in which its stiffled me; how the feeling of having limited agency in my life has led me to give away my own responsibility to affect change (or so my tarot cards say). I felt heard, seen and understood in her presence. Which of course, should be a given in therapy. However, she truly listened, pieced it all together and at the end of the session served up a nice, neatly packaged, unique and perfectly suited goal right back to me. The goal is simple: being confident enough to let people know where they have me fucked up at.
I was all being coy and poetic like I need to find my voice and I need to shrink the gap between my feelings and my expression, and my therapist is like girrrl, it sound’s like you just need to check some people is all. So we are absolutely loving that conclusion, and leaning all the way in to the precious feminine rage today, and all month long. Hence I’m sharing with you a few of my lil doodles that you’ll see throughout this entry, of just a handful of the bad-ass women who’ve really shown us how it’s done; Missy Elliott, Pam Grier, the Queen Bee, and the daring woman in a dashing fur (above) that goes by the now seemingly defunct @jahonwrld, who’s graciously drawn a map for us and all the visual learners out there. In addition, I thought I’d leave you with three more of my personal favorite musings of the woman varietal…
Speaking of the baddest - Pamela Suzette Grier, the Great - my dear friend Brittany is easily in any of my top 5 lists of fave women, so while I’m often looking for an excuse to bring her up because she’s just the best, it is actually quite fitting as she’s once been dubbed “the millennial Pam Grier” and rightfully so deserves her spot here at number one. I linked to her IG portfolio above so you can get to know her, just ‘cause. Insider tip: check out her story series "BHM 24" where she highlights historical moments of black excellence in the advertising industry, i.e. what the first-ever commercial marketed toward Black people was, or the story of Gail Fisher, the first black person with a speaking role in a spot, also the first black woman to win an Emmy and a Golden Globe (!), and more. Brittany is also the reason I’m on this here platform sharing my little soul to you patient readers, and her newsletter is a read I couldn’t recommend more.
The next thing I absolutely must share with you (is another commercial-based piece of femme genius) — Nike’s new Megan Thee Stallion ad, promoting the concept that anyone can be a hottie with a little bit of self-love and wellbeing - a mindstate aptly titled ‘Thee Hottie State of Mind’ (and of course, with a bit of help from her and Nike’s new ‘Hot Girl Systems’ line). The reason I must share this with you is because - aside from taking notes from the trainer and wellness coach we all wish we had in Megan, and the obvious fly-ness of it all, MY FRIEND IS IN THIS! And not just in it, the hot girl coach herself calls my princess bee by name!!! As The Cut explains; When one woman is about to give up on side squats during a workout, Megan pops up. “I know you’re not about to quit now,” she says, adding: “Do you wanna be cheeked up or do you wanna be sleeped up?” When another woman’s phone won’t stop going off while she’s on a walk, Megan appears, saying, “Do not let them stress you out” before summoning Nike holistic breath coach Bianca Harris to help with some breathing exercises. In another scene, a woman goes back and forth about whether to drink a green juice or eat some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Naturally, Megan — who has a brand deal with Flamin’ Hot — materializes out of thin air and tells her, “It’s giving both.” It is giving both ladies, it’s giving both indeed.
And last, but certainly not least, another wonderful woman who inspires me endlessly, and in fact has a shared affinity for feminine rage - is poledancer, artist and friend, Cami Arboles. Cami is someone I, like many women (SZA included), first discovered on the internet. Her story of being a Covid college kid, at none other than Yale, and beautifully twirling on her home pole in her graduate gown is a powerful and resonant one. Her style of dance is just so damn hypnotizing, and she makes all these cool connections to insects and nature. We love. Then I met her at a party shortly after moving to Los Angeles, and she was instantly so warm and celebratory of all things womanhood. So it’s fitting that this past Womens Day, she starred in this beautiful music video below. Enjoy my beloveds!