This is a guest post from alphafemme, part of the blog carnival to help raise awareness and support for Scarleteen.

My mother reads Dear Abby religiously. She’s done it for as long as I can remember, always picking out the “Lifestyle” section of our local daily paper and turning to page B2.

Some days growing up, my sister or father would abscond with the section before she got to it to do the crossword or read the comics, but she would keep her eye on it, calling dibs on the section next. As a kid, it didn’t occur to me to question her loyalty to the column, and in fact I blindly followed suit–reading Dear Abby, it seemed, was something one did if one was to be a Woman. I was never all that impressed by the advice “Abby” (Jeanne Phillips was her real name, if I remember correctly) doled out, and eventually I got bored of her predictable responses and stopped reading. The act of stopping wasn’t all that memorable or all that conscious; it just sort of slipped away, superseded by more important things.

It wasn’t until I was in college, home from a break one year, that I thought to ask my mother why she liked Dear Abby so much. I was sitting at the breakfast table with her some late morning (summer? weekend?), watched her reach for Lifestyle and turn to B2, and was momentarily struck with mild curiosity.

“Mom,” I said, “why do you read Dear Abby every day?”

She looked up at me, stricken, and sighed. ”Well,” she said, “I guess there’s no reason not to tell you.”

When she was 11, she told me, she’d been assaulted by a friend of her parents’. At that age in 1964, she didn’t have the language to identify what specifically had happened, she just knew she’d been violated. And she was scared. She knew, vaguely, that babies were made by men “doing things” to women, unspeakable things, and she knew that something unspeakable had been done to her, because the man had told her so, admonishing her that it was their “secret.” She felt isolated, ashamed, and was afraid that it mean she would have a baby, too.

So, unable to talk to her parents and lacking knowledge or awareness of any other resources at her disposal, she wrote to Dear Abby. Asking if she was pregnant. So every day, 11 years old, she read Dear Abby, hoping for a response.

And she got one. Dear Abby printed her letter, and wrote a warm and kind response explaining exactly what would’ve had to have happened for her to be pregnant, affirming that no matter what he’d done, it was wrong and not her fault, and telling her about some books that she could check out at the library for girls about their bodies and their sexuality. In printing her letter, Abby made a connection with my mom that she didn’t have in anyone else, validated her when otherwise in her life there was silence, unflinchingly and lovingly spoke to the fears and ignorance of a little girl coming of age in an environment so sexually repressive that she couldn’t even ask what exactly it was that made babies. In printing her letter, Abby unwittingly secured for herself a lifelong follower. It is an emotional connection, my mother told me, that hasn’t wavered, even though (she admitted) the printed responses these days seem more canned.

I cried when she told me this. I cried for the lonely and scared little girl in 1964; I cried because suddenly my mother wasn’t just my mother but a complete person whose life began way before I was even imagined; and I cried because I’d silenced myself, too, at 15, perhaps not so ignorant as my mother at 11 but every bit as lost and alone, when I’d been raped. I cried because I hadn’t told my mom, just like she hadn’t told hers, generation after generation recommitting itself to isolation. Wait, no, strike that — we don’t commit ourselves to isolation — isolation is imposed on us by a dominant society that reprimands and shames sexuality expressed, that awkwardly and embarrassedly approaches very limited and basic lessons about sex and sexuality, that embraces tired discourses of women as sexual “gatekeepers,” men as sexual animals, and rigid heterosexuality within the confines of marriage as the only acceptable sexual option, that does not invite questions, conversation, or any sort of genuine human connection around the topics of sex and sexuality.

My mother’s and my own fear and isolation after experiencing sexual violence is only one effect of the smothering silence. My fear in high school of being gay and praying to a god I didn’t even believe in to send me a boyfriend was another effect. My complete ignorance of any kind of sex and sexuality other than heterosexual penis-in-vagina-in-and-out-cum-done sex, including ways that non-heterosexuals have sex and specifically have *safe* sex, is another. My going to the public library after I was raped to search for ways to force a miscarriage in case I was pregnant, rather than asking my mom or my health teacher or any teacher for crying out loud, is yet another. And these are just the ways that a dearth of information and conversation about healthy sex and sexuality affected me. My heart hurts for all the other kids and teens out there now who are suffering through the silence in their own unique ways.

Scarleteen is a website that is breaking through all of that, providing a robust, inviting, kind, and healthy space for teenagers to get answers, make connections, and feel supported in all aspects of their awakening sexualities. They need support to stay on the web, and kids need them.

I needed them. My mom needed them.

If you can, give a little bit. If you can’t, tell people in your life, especially teenagers, that the website exists. You know, just slip it casually into conversation… teenagers don’t respond well to directions ;)

I moved to Seattle around four years ago from Minneapolis, where I lived for six years after leaving my hometown of Chicago. Growing up in Chicago, living in Minnesota and after an early childhood on the east coast, I was used to old things, to history, to a total lack of shiny-and-new. Growing up poor and in a number of far less-than-ideal living situations, my normal in how and where I lived was often pretty rough around the edges, and often involved a lot of effort from me, typically more than my fair share.

Seattle, however, is kind of the land of shiny-and-new. Almost every place I looked at when I was apartment-hunting felt sanitized and kind of like Barbie's Dream House to me: without my kind of character and so already-finished that I didn't see where there was room for my own stamp in them. The allure of the fixer-upper was nowhere to be found. I've always liked fixing places up that anyone else would see as hopeless: it's a challenge, and a situation where I might have the ability to feel like I'm awesome because I took something shitty and made it fantastic. I've always felt more at home in places that were a bit of a disaster, probably because that's just what I was used to, but whatever.

As it turns out, I found this house to rent that seemed amazing: it was over 100 years old, and in a neighborhood that at the time, had more old character and charm than new stuff. It had a ton of kooky little quirks I found really charming. It needed a bunch of work done to potentially make it nice, but it had the raw materials to be something awesome with work. I didn't think twice about how quickly the landlord rented it out to me, because I wanted it, so that just seemed like serendipity. Like this was meant to be my house, to the point that I had this idea that had anyone else tried to rent it, it would not have been so easy for them.

I did do a lot of creative work with it, though not as much as I'd have liked to. I just didn't have the time or the resources to do so much of it mostly on my own. As well, even from the start, I should have seen some red flags I just didn't. For instance, while I was so into working on it, my housemate wasn't as invested in that as I was. I should have recognized that when a landlord says you can just do whatever you want with a place with no limits, they're either not being truthful or just don't care much about the place. I also had to pay some of the costs of fixing it up, rather than the landlord paying me to do labor he should have done himself.

As the years went by, more things kept falling apart and breaking. I tried to keep up with them mostly on my own, especially since when I asked for help, what was given was either substandard or radio silence. Within a year, my lease also got shifted to a month-to-month lease, meaning that the landlord could ask me to go pretty much anytime with very little notice. Having survived that exact situation more than once in my life, and so barely, that felt horribly unstable, but I just accepted it instead of trying hard to assert my needs. Still, I felt more comfortable here than I thought I would have felt moving, both because moving or any kind of big start-over is so hard, and because this place felt so familiar, not just with its style and age, but with it's whole vibe: I've lived almost all of my life in places that were falling apart or neglected. I was used to that, and however uncomfortable that as, something about that did feel like home.

Last year, it finally became clear that I could drive myself batty trying to keep this place liveable and it just wasn't going to happen. I spent a winter without working heat in half the house, wrapped up in blankets all day working in front of a space heater. The basic fixtures kept breaking. There were leaks, including one that nearly took down my kitchen ceiling, and a lack of insulation that cost me more money in bills than I have to spend. One day, I was so frustrated with two things that broke that I just gave up, went to get myself a glass for some wine, and when I opened the cabinet, the door fell off in my hand. On top of my house falling apart all around me, I didn't even like the city it was in very much, and my neighborhood had also changed radically during the time I lived here in ways I did not like at all, and was not going to change back. I sank to the floor in a pile of tears, already upset due to building stress from managing work and some other huge changes in my life. It all felt so hopeless, and I so felt trapped in it, especially since at the time, moving wasn't an option I felt I could handle financially or practically.

But why was I staying in a city I didn't really like in the first place? Why was I staying in a house that was falling apart all around me more and more? Why did I keep trying to convince myself I could fix everything when I knew I couldn't, or that my landlord would suddenly do all kinds of things he'd never done? Why did I keep focusing on the small things that I loved about the house when the big things were so awful? Why was I investing more and more money, effort and love into something where getting a real return on that investment was about as likely as a million dollars falling from the sky? Why was I staying so focused on what this house could be, rather than focusing on the way it actually was and was most likely to remain? Why was I accepting a total lack of help from the people who should be helping me with it while ignoring some potential help others could have given me to be somewhere better? I'm a smart person: why on earth was I being so stupid?

Ultimately, I think it came down to the fact that I was so bogged down and overspent with a lot of things in my life, including this damn house. On top of everything else I was dealing with, the idea of feeling displaced from any kind of home at all, even a poor one, just seemed like too much. I had taken part in digging myself in deeper and deeper into a pit: having to take responsibility for the place I was keeping myself in was harder than being unhappy, but being able to pin it entirely on what the house was doing, what my housemate and landlord were not doing. I had gotten attached and stayed so attached to the "what-ifs" and had invested so much time, money and heart into this place: I was having trouble accepting my hopes for it were simply never going to come to fruition because it seemed like such a waste. I had gotten scared of making a change, and had strangely managed to forget that I was capable of making it and had done so many times before in my life, even when it was harder than this was now. I had become comfortable in being uncomfortable.

In a few weeks, I'm moving out.

I'm leaving this house and this city for one of the beautiful small islands just outside of it. For many years no, I've talked about how I've spent almost all of my life in very urban areas, yet when I needed peace, it's rural areas I've gone to to find it, and so I felt I might actually be a lot happier living rurally. The way my workday most often is, I can actually get away with only needing to go into the city a few times a month for work, so it is doable. Because it's just a short ferry ride into the city, I can be rural here while also having easy access to the city. I found a place to move to with almost the exact same rent as I'm paying now, but where everything works and nothing is broken. Sure, it's only 20 years old, so that feels and looks unfamiliar to me, but it's beautiful inside and out. I will literally get to wake up every day and walk out into the forest, which is heaven on earth to me. As is often the case, if we can shake ourselves out of our miasma, we can usually identify not only ways to get out of it, but ways that getting out can be part of pursuing more of what we've wanted and had as goals all along.

Of course, this means my having to pack up everything and move again. It means money spent on moving and resettling, which is always a major strain. It means all the practical, tiresome crap you have to do to relocate. That means risking that a new place or space may or may not be better than the old one in some ways, even though it most certainly will be in other ways. That means having to deal with change, which even when it's positive, is often uncomfortable and scary.

You may perhaps be wondering why I'm going on here at Scarleteen about my move. I'd be wondering, too.

I only just realized one of the big things that got me to these realizations about my house were conversations with some of you about your unhealthy, abusive or otherwise crummy relationships. So, I figured the least I owed you for that epiphany was the possibility of doing you the same turn, especially since your bad relationships have the capacity to screw you and your life up you a whole lot more than my bad house has the capacity to screw me and my life up.

We often have users come to Scarleteen who are in abusive, unhealthy, dysfunctional or craptastic relationships. Most of the time, you do know they're bad before we talk with you about them. Sometimes, you don't realize how bad until we talk, or have been trying to hold unto denials or the hopes that the relationship will just get better, either by some kind of magic, by someone who has never made any effort miraculously starting to, or by you, yourself, going nuts to try and make something bad into something good alone. Just like me, with this house.

I could stay here. My rent would keep going up and the house would keep costing me more and more while it all kept falling apart around me. I could put in continued effort while my landlord kept putting in less and less. I could freeze through another winter, trying to keep myself warm with the memory of the heat that used to work, the way the house probably was 50 years ago, the beautiful changes I made that could never quite get all finished but still might, and the hopes I had for this house, when it felt like nothing but lovely and positive possibility. I could stay here and risk the whole ceiling caving in on my head, which has become a real possibility.

You could stay where you're at, too. You could stay and, at best, things would stay just as bad or as substandard as they are now or, more realistically, you could stay and they would keep getting worse. You could stay and keep investing more and more while getting less and less. You could freeze through another winter, trying to keep yourself warm with your hopes, those past feelings of possibility, and the time when things did seem okay, shutting out the reality which has made clear that those hopes will only ever be hopes. You could stay and risk someone abusive and unhealthy doing you the kind of harm that you can't come back from, which is often a real possibility.

I could stay, and so could you. But I can also go. I can take the chance and the risk of something better, remember or learn what I'm really capable of. I can get the hell out of here and do the grieving I need to about what could have been, but wasn't, and move forward, putting my time and effort and energy into something or somewhere much more likely to be worth that kind of investment. I can move into something that doesn't need fixing now or right from the onset. I can step outside my comfort zone and likely wind up feeling more comfortable once the dust settles, rather than less. So can you.

I know that it's hard as hell to leave a bad or abusive relationship, especially the longer you've been in it, the more hopes you tacked on to it, the more promises you believed, the more your whole life got sucked into it and tethered to it. It's harder still if you have managed to convince yourself or allowed yourself to be convinced that any or all parts of the abuse are love or some kind of natural and unavoidable consequence of your existence.

I could tell myself that he floor that is wasting away in this house was once so, so beautiful, and old things just need my love to be better. I could convince myself that if I made more money, or chose to do something else with my life than I do, I'd not be in this house, I'd be able to have kept it running better, or able to have been more assertive with my landlord. I could figure that all of this would be something I could handle if I had done things differently and had more to fall back on. But I didn't, so this is why this is happening, right? This is what I am solely responsible for and stuck with, right?

Wrong. My house is falling apart because before I even got here people who were supposed to take care of it well didn't. It's falling apart because it needs a kind of help that my love or my residency can't provide. For sure, I have some responsibility in what happened here: I could have moved out earlier if I'd have asked more people for help, if I'd taken some positive risks earlier -- and maybe even put myself in a temporary space to be able to do that that wasn't great, but helped me get closer to being able to make positive changes. All the same, while I'm responsible for not changing my circumstances when I could, what I'm not responsible for is for this house not housing me well, just like you're not responsible for any way someone abused or mistreated you. You're just responsible for doing all you can to get away from it to a place that's safe, sound and where your love, effort and care will be returned in kind.

Am I going to miss things about this old house, this neighborhood, this city? Absolutely. There's an old clawfoot bathtub here that is divine, even though the faucet never stops leaking. I made a great garden here and a meadow up front. I painted things here that are very creative and cool and have my unique stamp: I hate to leave them, they feel like part of me. I have routines here. I have a couple places I go here that I really like. I'll be further away from a couple of friends. But I'll deal: new places offer new things to value. When I'm honest with myself, it's impossible to deny that what I'll be missing the most was how things were when I first moved in, when the bloom wasn't off the rose. When my feelings about everything were painted with the exceptional spackle that a sense of possibility is and the desire for something great can be. I had hopes for this house, but they didn't come to fruition. That sucks, but it also happens in life, and usually more than once. You accept it, your brush your knees off, and then you find new hopes, hopefully getting a little better each time at identifying where those hopes are more likely to become realities. You also accept that we've got to take risks for the good stuff.

It may be that the change I'm about to make, the next place I'm going, turns out similarly. I'm pretty sure it won't, because I've applied some lessons I learned from this. I've set it up, for instance, so that I have a long-term lease: I made clear from the start I refused to sign unto something month-to-month, because I know that doesn't provide me the stability I need and know I deserve to have my needs met. I recognized that getting a better place, a more functional place, meant the screening process and the way in took more time and was not quite as easy as getting this place was, and I accepted that. I've made sure that nothing needs to be fixed by me: walking into this new place, everything already works and nothing is already broken. I've asked for help and support from the people around me in my transition, and they're glad to provide it. I'm leaving things behind here that I just don't need or that I know hinder me.

Sure, it's more shiny-and-new than I'm used to, it's somewhere I haven't lived before, and I'm going to have to learn to do some things well I'm not yet good at. And maybe the forest that has always felt like a great refuge for me won't feel the same when it's where I live instead of where I visit. It's totally possible. If and when we do things differently, apply what we've learned and make choices based on goals we've had for ourselves... that's when we tend to net different results, better results.

While my move comes with some question marks, continuing to stay here comes with few. The trouble is, the certainty in staying is all about being sure that, at best, things would stay exactly as crap as they are. What's even more likely is that they'd get crappier. When we're honest with ourselves, we all know something falling apart is going to stay falling apart once we've done all we can to try and repair it with no results. I have to recognize that things would get worse if I stayed: more things would fall apart, and I'd get more and more hopeless and trapped, especially since the longer I stay, the tougher it is to go.

Am I scared? You bet. Big changes are scary, even when they're potentially good ones. Even as someone who has taken many big risks in her life and gone through a lot of changes, big change never really stops being scary. I'm nervous and scared and I feel a bit unsteady on my feet, even though I'm moving toward something I have wanted and dreamed about, something that very clearly is far more likely to be positive and better.

So I keep reminding myself that this is living. Trying new things, taking risks that seem likely to be beneficial, stepping outside my comfort zone in pursuit of personal growth and positive change, is all of what being alive is all about. I shouldn't feel stuck in the ground until I'm six feet under, after all. Staying stuck, sticking with anything that clearly isn't working, avoiding what's new and unknown is the antithesis of living: it's refusing to be fully alive. That's not who I am, and I'm sure it's not who any of you are.

I know that my house isn't exactly your relationship, particularly since, as an object, it doesn't have the ability to have the kind of power over me another person could have, and I also couldn't get as attached to it as I could to another person. While the conditions of my house are awful, my house itself can't manipulate me or try and control me. My house isn't doing anything maliciously, nor does it know it's treating me horribly and trying to rationalize it or someone make it's actions seem like my fault. My house also doesn't have the capacity to fix itself, unlike whoever you're in a relationship with.

My house isn't calling me names, isn't telling me I'm stupid or a slut, isn't accusing me of things I haven't done or trying to control where I go or who I talk to. My house isn't trying to keep me from my friends, family or other people who care about me and would make sure I'm always safe; my house isn't trying to limit me in what I do in my life so that it can feel superior to me or make it tougher for me to go. My house isn't destroying my cherished belongings on purpose. My house isn't hitting or punching me, isn't raping me or trying to coerce me into sex or pregnancies I don't want. My house isn't doing horrible things to me and telling me I asked for them. My house, itself, didn't actually make me any promises it knew it couldn't keep. My house also doesn't have the capacity to choose what it does or doesn't do, and isn't actively choosing to treat me badly. It earnestly can't help or change the state that it's in, unlike the person who is failing or abusing you who has chosen not to work on themselves to get better and to stop hurting you, others and themselves. My house isn't telling me that I couldn't do better, that it's as good as it gets. My house will let me leave a bad situation without trying to trick or force me into staying in something where I'm going to continue to be harmed.

My house isn't your relationship or your partner. If any of those things are happening to you in your relationship, your house, as it were, is in a much worse state than mine is. Which begs the big question: why are you staying when I'm leaving?

Like I said, I know leaving a bad relationship is hard, and that leaving an abusive relationship is even harder. I've been in that spot (which is some of why I feel so bothered by how it took me so long to recognize the problems with this house), and have had friends there, too. If you need help in leaving, come and ask for it. You can ask me or one of the staff here and we'll be happy to help you find local resources to help you out, you can call any number of hotlines, look up your local domestic violence/intimate partner violence shelter or support group or you can ask the people you know really love and care for you for help, being honest with them about what's going on.

But if you don't want to freeze through another winter, have the roof cave in on you or wind up more and more trapped in your interpersonal version of this sad, crumbling house, then you've got to take at least one step that'll get you to the kind of space that will earnestly be a good home for your heart and your spirit, even if those first steps feel shaky or your knees knock when you take them. I deserve and am worthy of that. So are you.

Yesterday, I had my hair cut.

As the stylist called my name, she asked if I would like a shampoo. I politely declined. She then noticed how thick my hair is and she said she was going to take me back to the sink to wet it. And being incredibly used to this, I readily agreed and followed.

But just as she had finished wetting my hair and I expected her to turn the water off, she started squirting stuff on my head.

I froze. I’m not great with confrontation, especially with strangers, and have difficultly forming exactly what I want to say in just a short moment. She kept rubbing my head, then squirting some more, rubbing and squirting, rubbing and squirting.

The salon smell was all around me, and finally when she’d finished rinsing, only to squirt yet more stuff on my head, I blurted out “so what’s all this stuff you’re putting on my head?”

“You don’t use conditioner?” she asked incredulously.

Once she’d finished lecturing me on why I should use conditioner, I opened my mouth again to say, “I mean, before, too. You put a lot of things on my head.”

“Oh, that? It was shampoo. Don’t worry, I’m not going to charge you for it. It just makes my life easier.”

The problem was that it made my life a whole lot more difficult.

You see, I’m allergic to almost all artificial scents. Quite a few popular natural scents, too. I can’t walk down the shampoo aisle, or the soap aisle, or the laundry detergent aisle in the store. I have to go to natural food stores and actively seek out all natural, unscented products, which is usually not an easy task. I can’t use normal cat litter or home cleaning agents, I can’t borrow a friend’s lotion, and I cringe at being around someone who is wearing cologne or perfume. If these products are actually put on my body, it’s a very unpleasant thing, indeed.

So I sat there through my actual haircut just waiting for it to be over, and begging for it to end soon. I tried to take breaths as shallow as possible, to keep as much of the scent out of my nose as I could. When she asked, this time, whether I would like any product put in my hair, I declined and said “I’m allergic to most products, actually.” Her “oh” was a guilty one, and I dropped other plans to rush the 20 minutes home and hop directly in the shower. My third shampoo and blow dry for the day complete, I could finally breathe again.

Contrary to how this post looks, I’m not writing it because I want to complain about a bad experience in customer service. I don’t doubt that the stylist was genuinely trying to make her own life easier, and genuinely thought she was doing me a favor in the process. I’m writing this post because of the simple fact that a favor to one person is not a favor to another. I’m writing this post because such situations are so common and can be so very, very easily avoided.

In the end, it could have been a lot worse. While I’m allergic to just about everything, my allergies aren’t particularly severe in the big scheme of things. My nose itches and runs, my eyes burn, and my head hurts. But I don’t usually break out in hives or a rash. I don’t get migraines and need to lay down for hours after exposure. My eyes don’t water, my skin doesn’t puff up, and my airways don’t close. I don’t have chronic pain issues that could be triggered by certain scents. I don’t have sensory issues that make it difficult to be touched. And surely there are many, many other problems I don’t have that I don’t even know enough to be aware of.

Though I don’t consider my own personal allergies to make me disabled, this is in part a disability issue. It’s in part about the way that most people seem to assume a “norm” and forget the huge number of people who don’t fit it, and who can be harmed by the assumptions. It is in part about the way that certain conditions are made invisible, forgotten about, or assumed to not exist until or unless told otherwise.

But ultimately, while accessibility, accommodation, and awareness are huge issues, and I think that every one of us should do our best to learn about those disabilities that we ourselves do not have, the problem I had yesterday was not even an issue of someone not being aware enough of what precise impact her actions could have on me. Though it certainly could have solved the problem in this particular instance, the ultimate cause of it was not her failure to consider that not all people can well-tolerate just any product being put on their bodies.

The issue was consent.

Consent is not just an issue in sexual situations, though we tend to talk about it largely as though it is. Consent is something that we negotiate or fail to negotiate in all of our interactions with other people, every time we touch or ask if we can touch. In this case, I consented to having my hair wet down. I didn’t consent to having product put in my hair, or to having my scalp massaged. My consent was assumed, and falsely. And while quite likely most people would have easily consented if asked “is it okay if I shampoo your hair free of charge,” I wouldn’t. The only way to know whether or not a favor is really a favor is to ask.

It’s wrong to take a person’s consent to one activity as consent to all related activities. And while those of us in anti-violence work already recognize this, it’s more than time to extend the principle beyond sex.

Many feminists and disability rights activists have made the argument long before I have, but I think it’s worth a repeat and a revisit. What if we didn’t assume our right to touch in everyday, non-sexual situations? What if we didn’t just take for granted that a certain touch will be okay? What if we were to not consider our own desires and thoughts about a certain touch, but those of the person we’re touching? Many would undoubtedly argue, and have argued, that the world would be a much colder and less intimate place. But I argue that it’d be a far more communicative place. It’d also be a world much safer to a wide variety of people. It’d be a world with a far more genuine respect for bodily autonomy and personal rights.

And yes, it very likely would transform the way that we view sex and sexual assault. If we viewed all touch as not a right but a privilege, all physical contact as requiring consent rather than acquiescence, our views on what a sexual interaction looks like and on what constitutes rape would also undoubtedly transform. But even if they did not, bodily rights matter in all circumstances, and reclaiming them in all situations, including those that are non-sexual, quite simply just matters. Our autonomy does not begin and end in the bedroom, or center around our erogenous zones. Our bodies belong to us, and every part of them has value.

(Reprinted with permission from Cara Kulwicki at The Curvature)