Can you imagine a scenario where you, a vital older woman, actually liked your body instead of making it a battleground where you fret over your weight, wrinkles, and saggy boobs? What if food wasn’t the enemy and sleepless nights had their own advantages? What if you had practices for honoring your body? Body acceptance for the older [...]
Pat Taub
Mother’s Day Actions Sunday is Mother’s Day and peace and justice groups are marking it with actions to support mothers in jail and migrant mothers whose children were taken from them when they crossed the border into the US. For the third year in a row Black justice groups have organized “Black Mama’s Bail Out Day,” raising bail [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by TESSA CALVERT-LINNELL Close the front door behind me, then turn on the lights and put the shopping away. Nothing will move in this house – not a chair or a spoon – unless at the touch of my hand. Nothing breathes but me – except for a few plants in pots and the occasional spider, because I’m one of millions of [...]
Pat Taub
Julian Assange My heart is heavy with the imprisonment of Julian Assange and what it portends for freedom of the press. If Assange is extradited to the US he will no doubt be tortured and placed in solitary confinement, which is just another form of torture, sending the message to reporters everywhere that their sources will be compromised. Whistle [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANE SESKIN For more than forty years I’ve made poems. They’ve seen me through illness, fear, anger and grief-work. They’ve filled me with delight, happiness, joy and laughter. Poetry has been a way to observe and take pictures without a camera. Making poems helps me witness and notate the days. The poems have been comfort [...]
Pat Taub
Arriving Home I’m back home in Maine as of early Sunday morning when I returned from my winter escape to Palm Springs, CA. This was my first extended stay in the desert, which made me aware that I prefer the ocean to the desert. Even so Palm Springs has its own natural beauty with its exotic desert blooms, great hiking trails and soaring [...]
Pat Taub
Book Review: The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America by Virginia Sole-Smith GUEST POST BY JANE DOUGALL “For many of us food feels dangerous. We fear it. We regret it. And we categorize everything we eat as good or bad, with the ‘bad’ list always growing longer. No meat, no diary, no gluten—and, [...]
Pat Taub
International Women’s Day Today we celebrate International Women’s Day, a day that takes me back to the summer of 1995 when I was fortunate enough to attend the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing. I went as an NGO (Non Government Organization), attending eye-opening seminars and panels, where Third World women challenged their privileged [...]
Pat Taub
Several years ago when I grew weary of my unpartnered Valentine’s Days limited to red construction paper hearts from my grandchildren or Internet offers of bargain chocolates, I decided to make a ritual of doing something special for myself on Valentine’s Day so I wouldn’t feel left out. That first year I indulged in a longtime [...]
Pat Taub
Older women are feeling powerful as they discover a voice they didn’t possess in their previous decades. They’re speaking up with a boldness and confidence unknown to their younger selves. Writer and blogger, 80 year-old Elaine Soloway has shed her passive aggressive self to take on verbal bullies. The popular Australian writer, [...]
Pat Taub