empowerment

It really is that simple, isn't it? It sure should be.

Karine Polwart's song and video beg the wonderful question: what all ARE you women and girls going to do someday? What do you strongly want to do, for sure, but more to the point, what do you KNOW, in your guts and your heart, that you are simply GOING to do?

I have a vagina. I love my vagina. After all, she is my vagina, and we have the perfect working relationship. I was never ashamed of her, even when I wasn't entirely certainly how friendly we would be. I can't imagine my life without her because she is so influential in my identity.

So you can imagine my outright fury when a town in my homestate of Florida got involved in Eve Ensler's V-Day campaign, set performances for her play, and then changed their marquee to advertise their production of "The Hoohaa Monologues." I'm sorry. I don't have a hoohaa. I don't even have a pussy or a cunt or a kitty. I have a vulva? And eventually I guess I'll have a birth canal. But for now, I have a vagina. I have a medically accurate, neutral, beautiful vagina that I am very proud of, thanks.

I will be graduating from university in the middle of December, and I've never been so terrified in my life.

My B.A. will be in English, but I feel like it's the least practical thing I've ever done now. I love my program and the professors, but every job that interests me requires a degree in Psychology or Sociology--ironically, the very concentrations I always considered useless. Cruel fate laughs at my arrogance, but for once, I'm laughing too.

I'm thrilled to finally have a chance to start at this whole 'saving the world' thing. I feel like I'm standing at the edge of the rest of my life. I've started writing again, and I feel myself becoming the change I want to see in the world, as Ghandi put it. While the real world is painted as a daily grind of 9-to-5 gray drudgery, I'm exhilarated at the possibility.