A piece I wrote for the Medea Project’s Performance at the Planned Parenthood Fundraiser

If I could whisper tenderly to your womb,
and ask her to reveal her deepest secrets,
what would she share?

Would she speak of the synthetic hormones, elevated prostegeron and estrogen levels that make her insides churn? Would she share her grandmother’s memories of DES that left the next generation unable to have children of their own? Would she ask if you remembered Delilah, your mother’s friend, born with the truncated arms because of the oral contraceptives the doctored had advocated so many years ago?

Would she ask, “Do you think it’s really that different now?”

Pharmaceutical companies prophesying that little purple pills falling from the sky will save the day?

Is this what sexual liberation looks like? Is this what reproductive rights have come to mean?
If so, I want a new Revolution.

The New Year is often a time when we make health and fitness resolutions, with the number of people hitting the gym in January exponentially increasing. But as so many of us know all too well, the truth is that by February, most of us have lost sight of our goals, with our New Years’ intentions never realized.
 A main reason that people fall so quickly out of their New Year’s fitness routine is because they are not seeing immediate results. We often think, “I’ve been busting my butt in the gym for three weeks, and I’ve only lost a pound, this is not worth it!” We become demotivated and so we stop working out.
In hopes to help people break out of the fitness rut and truly create a fitness routine that is sustainable and enjoyable, here are:

9 Tips for Making this New Year Healthy, Joyful and Fitness Filled!

1. Keep tuning into how you feel from exercise rather than how you look

In our fast paced, results driven culture, we often want to see change NOW. And while, yes, surgery can provide that and participants who are on the biggest looser exercising 8 hours a day can achieve quick results, the truth is that for most of us, healthy, sustainable weight loss is a slow process. If we only focus on how many pounds we are losing, than we often get discouraged and give up.
If, however, instead we instead how we feel after exercise–how much better our mood is, how peaceful our mind is, how much more energy and focus we have, than we will keeping coming back to exercise because these mental and emotional benefits will be enough within themselves. The catch is that using these benefits as motivation will create a sustainable exercise routine that sticks, which is what, in the end, will bring the physical results we initially hoped for!