Themes
Your butt is not the problem
As we subject our swathed-in-sweatpants, bulked-up-on-stress-eating bodies to the gaze of other people, Alexander reminds us to look on un-svelte shapes with sympathy and respect.
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Sweet dreams
We’re accustomed to thinking of nightmares as dreams that allow us to feel emotions we wall off in our waking hours, the surfacing of subconscious fears to the conscious mind. But we don’t have a corresponding word for dreams that bring joy.
MoreThe awkward stage: love’s secret agent
Thank goodness for poet Lawrence Raab. In “My Life Before I Knew It” he says everything I wanted to tell my kids about heading off regret and seeing grace at work in your life.
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A powerful woman on powerlessness
Harper invites us to imagine the complete and utter powerlessness of people on the slave block, particularly of mothers. Defenseless, unheeded, bitter, frail, shrinking, mournful, desolate. The adjectives heap misery on misery.
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