Help When It’s Needed

This was originally published in the Jackson Free Press on Oct. 2, 2013

Years ago when I was a young mother, I worked two, sometimes three, low-wage restaurant jobs. This was not easy work. It was extraordinarily taxing—not only on my body but my mind. Wait staff have a lot of tasks to complete. Plus, they have to smile and be pleasant even when customers and management serve up a big old side of mistreatment.

#Working those kinds of jobs always involves much more hard work than money, which is why I had two and three at a time. But even when I worked two full-time and one part-time job, I still couldn't make ends meet.

#Recently, fast-food workers across the country went on strike. They asked for something fairly simple: a living wage. Make no mistake: The multinational companies that employ these workers can afford to pay better. But many from the right-wing political sphere called striking workers greedy, lazy and un-American.

#Fast-forward to the congressional debate over food-stamp benefits (or SNAP), which has the potential to affect many of these same workers. I keep hearing from conservatives—and even some liberals—that "those people" just need to work harder. If only "they" would do that, then the collective American "we" wouldn't have to take care of "them." The problem with that thinking is that many people who receive SNAP do work.

#Surprisingly absent from the broader discussion of responsibility has been the topic of corporate responsibility in the matter. When companies pay their employees fairly, people who work don't need food stamps. I find this disjointed thinking odd and non-congruent. It seems as if, in the eyes of some, the working poor are wrong no matter what they do.

#In all my working years—on and off public assistance—I have contributed to the community. I am raising epic, awesome kids (yes, I am biased). I resent it when others imply that because people need assistance to put food on the table, they are drug addicts, lazy or worth less than other people.

#Every person on assistance has a story. Some may have stories you approve of, and some may not. At the end of the day, I would like to think I live in a country that believes even people we don't like deserve to eat, one that is willing to feed people in need even when we don't approve of every food choice. I want to have faith that I live in a country that believes providing free school lunches to hungry children is a good and moral thing to do.

#I hope my country shows me I'm right. 

It's Easy To Be "Pro Life" Until....You Need An Abortion

Originally Posted on Defending The Last Clinic  August 20, 2013 It contains a few edits

The sun was beating down through the car window, my mouth was dry and my legs felt like lead.  I was trying to figure out how I ended up here. In my mind I knew how- I was a bad girl I was stupid and careless. I kept telling myself all those things. How did I let this happen?  I couldn't be pregnant now. So there I was 22 years old mother of 5 about to do something I thought I would never do. Have an abortion. See I wasn't like those other women, you know the ones, the irresponsible ones who didn't “own their life choices”. The reason I had 5 kids is I owned my “mistakes”.

Abortion had never even been an option for me when I found out I was pregnant at 16. In fact the first place I called to go for a pregnancy test wasn't Planned Parenthood it was Birthright a anti choice organization that offered services much like a Crisis Pregnancy Center. I couldn't go to Planned Parenthood when I was 16 because everything in my upbringing had told me they were evil and I had believed them.

As a little girl sitting in the dark stained wooden pews of our fundamentalist Baptist church I often had questions. I didn't understand why I couldn't wear pants when I was younger and then when we switched churches God magically changed his mind and I could. Only I still had to always wear skirts to church ALWAYS! That always made me wonder what would happen if I didn't would God come down and smite me? I mean I was only one little girl in Wisconsin -I always figured God had better things to do. I often wondered why women couldn't be church leaders or speak in church except during “women’s events”. I was always full of questions. It was never ok to question the good book and the teachings of God. So even though I was a questioning type I never really thought twice about my church’s stance on abortion or all the things I learned as a child and adolescent about abortion and sex. I did mention I was raised fundamentalist evangelical Baptist, right? Think Jerry Falwell,  (except oddly my grandmother strongly disliked him) John Hagee and Pat Robinson kinds of ideas.  There were lots of rules about life, especially sex and well women we don’t get a say.

Rule one-was sex is BAAAADDDD I mean it bad! It was dirty and bad, until it magically became good when you found the right God fearing (same race) man and got married. Then sex and babies were great- actually required.  In fact if you couldn't have babies you weren't suppose to be too shocked if your husband wanted a woman who could provide him children. (that is a whole other post) Rule two- If you were a girl who was dumb enough to get raped or slutty and tempted some good man to have sex with you or weak enough to let some bad man tempt you and you got knocked up- tough cookies for you. Abortion was NEVER an option. Not for rape, not for incest, and especially not for slutty girls who should have heeded God’s will and kept their lady parts to themselves (By the way NO masturbation either y’all if you’re horny just PRAY). Hormonal birth control is abortion and abortion is murder. I am a child of the 80s. Anti abortion rhetoric was very popular in my church then. I heard often about the holocaust being committed against the unborn. How I should be proud as the mulatto child of a single mom that she owned up to her sin and had me. I really couldn't thank people enough for calling me a black bastard baby on the sly. I was 12 when my mother experienced a stillbirth it was one more reason to demonize women who get abortions. How dare they throw away the chance she would give anything to have back. What ungrateful people they must be. I heard over and over how only selfish women chose to destroy the life God had blessed them with. This was usually paired with the story of some good Christian family who was just waiting to adopt but couldn't. Of course it was because of abortion they couldn't adopt. More than anything I heard how Planned Parenthood injured, maimed, and killed women (lies). That they didn't provide real health care and were only out to make money. The accusation that always stuck with me was that they would give you an abortion even if you weren't pregnant.

I grew up hearing those things until I was 14 and they were still with me as my friend and I walked past protesters who called me a murderer, told me to “be responsible” and they would “help me love my baby”  and yelled at me not to “kill my baby”. They didn't know or understand that I had 5 babies at home to care for-one under a year old-and a doctor who had warned me not to get pregnant for at least two years or it could kill me.  I didn't want to be there but I NEEDED to be there.  I hadn't wanted to go through the state mandated 24 hour waiting period, the informed consent lecture by phone or the stupid video of what an abortion is. Not because any of it made me feel guilty it all just seem like an insult to my intellect. It just drew out the inevitable. I knew what I was there for and my mind was made up before I arrived.

I sat in the waiting room looking around at the other women thinking “I wonder what her story is”. They all looked different some were calm, some scared, some tired, none of us looked like we wanted to be there.  Some of them may have been “good girls” who would go back to church on Sunday and act like abortion is evil. I held my friend’s hand and I waited. They finally called me back for my ultrasound. The technician, who had been chatting with me, got strangely quiet and then called the doctor in. The doctor introduced himself and said “Ms. Roberts there is no heartbeat and it seem the embryo stopped progressing several weeks ago- you are going to have a miscarriage. You should go home and contact your regular doctor especially if you don’t start bleeding in a few days. If you don’t have a regular doctor you can follow up with us. We will refund your money on your way out” He smiled at me gently and patted my hand. My mind was blown! They were suppose to be giving me a back alley abortion procedure right then and there according to everything I was ever taught. I had already began to question my views but this meant I had been lied to flat out for years! The morning I got up to go and get an abortion I still considered myself pro-life. I was one of those people that said I would never have an abortion but what you do is your business. That was a big step for me from abortion is always murder and those women are going to hell. Still for me I was not one of them. Those women were irresponsible I had a medical reason that made me different, right?

The truth is, it was that day that I realized I wasn't different than "those women" and although I was sent home that day I am no better or worse than the 1 in 3 women who will have an abortion in their lifetime. Had they not sent me home I would have had that abortion and several days later when my body spontaneously aborted I was relieved to no longer be pregnant. I will never apologize for not wanting to be pregnant or unwilling to take the medical risk at that time to have another child. In all the years since I never mourned the loss of that pregnancy the way I did my other two miscarriages either. Those were different times in my life, different emotions and different circumstances. I left that clinic the same mother, daughter, employee, and citizen I was before. No better no less. I wasn't dirty I wasn't a bad person. I went to the doctor like other women before me and other women since.

That day I learned far from being crazed money hungry boogie bears abortion providers are compassionate health care providers (not saying there are never bad ones there are bad docs EVERYWHERE).  Planned Parenthood took good care of me. They were kind and patient. The exact same things I see every week at Jackson Women’s Health Organization. They also called and followed up with me everyday until I miscarried. They didn't have to do that. I wasn't really their problem anymore. After I had almost died during a miscarriage from lack of care at a Catholic hospital this level of care and concern was refreshing and shocking.

The biggest lesson I learned is it’s easy to be pro life (anti choice) until you are the one who needs or wants an abortion. It’s easy to tell other people what to do when you can never get pregnant. It is easy to project your feelings of wanting a child or having lost a child onto another woman’s pregnancy experience (as I did when my mother experienced a stillbirth) when it’s not you who needs one.  At the end of the day none of that matters for the lives and choices of individual women and families.

Families just like mine.

I Don't Regret Helping My Daughter Get An Abortion

(This originally appeared on the Defending The Last Clinic blog September 5,2013)

“It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them”- Alfred Adler

It was a day I never thought would happen. I thought I had done everything to guard against it. Yet several months ago there I was hearing that my 15 year old daughter was pregnant.

It all seemed so surreal. How could this have happened to us? As I stood listening to her tell me  the test was positive I struggled with the strong desire to scream and cry. In my mind my daughter knew better. She is the homeschooled daughter of the president of the state chapter of a national feminist organization. The first time she ever spoke at the capitol was at a joint Senate and House hearing on teen pregnancy. She was 13 and spoke about the need for comprehensive sex education. She and I along with her sister are clinic escorts. She knows all about birth control, condoms, and Plan B. She has always had knowledge about and access to contraception as well as being encouraged to wait until she is older to have sex.

This was one of those moments in life when I was faced with living my beliefs. I had always said if one of my daughters got pregnant as a teen I wouldn’t flip out and judge her like so many parents do. I would love her, respect her, and let her choose how to handle it. I would support her no matter what. Yet my mind immediately did judge and I wanted to shake her.

I took a deep breath put my arm around her and said “everything will be ok”. Then we traveled down the short hall to the counseling room at the clinic we escort at. I kept telling myself “stay calm, breathe, she needs to know you love her”. As we sat down all she kept saying was “I don’t know how this happened” over and over. The truth was in that moment she couldn’t remember having sex the one time with the young man she was seeing. She isn’t alone this happens to grown women all the time who find themselves faced with unplanned pregnancy. The clinic ultrasound tech peaked in with a soft smile and offered to take her back to see how far along she was.

Left alone with two staff members I broke down in tears saying “she knew better” and “I warned her”. It’s funny how all the rational things you know about teen sex and pregnancy go out the window in a crisis. The truth is my daughter was using condoms. Guess what sometimes they fail. Especially, when children who aren’t educated in their use like my child is are the ones placing them on their penis.

So there we were sitting, waiting. The clinic counselor said I was the calmest parent she had ever seen- so I guess there’s that. Even with that comment I couldn’t help feeling awful. Like I failed.

Like I suspected my daughter returned and said she was 5 weeks pregnant. I told her calmly and plainly she had three options she could parent, she could choose adoption or she could have an abortion. I also told her she had time to decide since she was so early in her pregnancy.

Let me tell you my daughter and I both LOVE babies! She loves kids. She is a great babysitter. She and her sister have a babysitting business. She wants to be a mom. She also helps me as a doula. Yet none of this means she is ready to be a mother at 15.

The clinic was closed the next week so we had over a week to be home with her being incredibly morning sick , unable to eat and asking questions about what it was like to be a teen mom. I was honest with her. I wouldn’t trade my children for anything but it was hard VERY hard. It is nothing like the fairy tale that anti choicers sell  to girls. Yes you can get benefits but you have to tell the state all your business to get them.  I had to work two and three jobs at a time often missing majors parts of my children’s lives. I wouldn’t have made it without my mother helping me every step of the way.

I made plans in my head for each options, if she chose to parent I thought it would be hard but we could do it. I’m a doula who works with teen moms I know the ropes. I tried not to tell her what to do and just gave her simple honest answers to her questions. It was about a day before we addressed the huge issue looming-the fact that my daughter has a illness that is managed by medication that is not compatible with pregnancy. The option for her would be to go off her medication and risk her health severely deteriorating during the pregnancy to the point of hospitalization.  Those are a lot of factors to lay at the feet of a 15 y/o girl but this was not my pregnancy or my choice it was hers alone. She spent hours curled up like a baby as I stroked her hair and after days of quiet reflection SHE settled on abortion as her choice.

So I made sure she received religious counseling pre procedure from Faith Aloud. She read the stories of other women online on the I had an abortion FB page.  I wanted her to know even there was no shame in what she was choosing to do she was walking a road many had walked before her. I wanted her to understand she had control. This was HER decision and she would have to be a parent, she would be the one relinquishing if she chose adoption and only she would be having an abortion, not me. I told her she could change her mind.  She said nope she knew what she wanted to do.

Doing the work I do I already knew the extra hoops parents are required to go through to obtain an abortion for their daughter if she is under 16. Let me tell you that knowing something and living something are two different things. In Mississippi a girl under 16 has to have parental permission from BOTH parents, a picture ID, and her birth certificate (which is redundant if she has a state ID since it was used to get the ID but whatever). It is the first time I was ever happy that Kayla’s father is not on her birth certificate because tracking him down wasn’t going to happen, we barely speak.

I had never even thought about having to go through the hoops of getting my daughter a state ID. We like many families in poverty who have moved often couldn’t find her birth certificate so I had to send off to her state of birth for that, priority mail. Then there was actually securing the ID. Our vehicle which like many low income families runs when it feels like it decided to break down when we were driving around to get the ID. Thankfully we have friends who could help us not everyone does. We also live in the city were we can get all this done . We didn’t have to drive 30 minutes or more away like many women.

We are fortunate that when my daughter and I couldn’t get through on the NAF hotline for abortion fund help (medicaid only pays for abortion in very rare cases my daughter’s wasn’t one her pregnancy was not a result of rape or sexual assault and she wasn’t about to die), I was give a person to call to get her intake completed. We were fortunate that we are surrounded by pro choice friends who were able to pitch in and help us with the cost of her procedure and take the day off to support her, unlike many of the families we see at the clinic.  Not only was I there on that day but a close friend who is a therapist was there in case she wanted to talk, had feelings to deal with, or just changed her mind and wanted to go home and come up with a different plan.

The day of her procedure she insisted on volunteering as an escort.  Which actually worked out well because when procedure time rolled around the protesters didn’t even notice her.  They were too busy harassing the other women coming and going to notice a regular fixture especially since we had several camera crews on site and they were showing off for them. In fact we were in a group of patients whose feet were filmed receiving the state mandated pre procedure counseling.

Since she is a minor she had the option to have me in the room for her procedure but she wanted to go alone.My daughter received excellent care. The doctor who performed my daughters procedure was caring and polite not only to my daughter but to me.   He asked her again before they started if she wanted to do it and talked to her through the whole procedure (I’ll let her tell her story in her own post).  Her procedure was quick and without complications.

She went home and rested. I felt relieved, she felt relieved. I was happy that she had choices and wouldn’t have to postpone or give up the chances like I did. Happy that she wasn’t being forced to risk her health to give birth. Within a few days she decided she wanted to go back to the clinic and volunteer to escort.  I thought she might want a break that the insults of the anti choice harassers might bother her. Nope, in fact her resolve was greater than ever. I don’t think she ever thought it would be her at the clinic. She says she just wants to help and she does just that.

For me the hardest thing about this whole journey has been living up to the principles I say I live by. It is easy to say we are “pro-choice” or “reproductive justice activists” those are just words and titles if not put into action. It is hard to live them and let the people we love have autonomy, choice, and honor their decisions as their own regardless of what we think and feel they should do.

I know there are people who want to know if I regret helping my daughter with her abortion NO I DON’T! Frankly if she or one of her sisters were pregnant and asked me tomorrow I would do it again. Why? Their bodies, their reproductive futures are THEIR OWN not mine! They are my children-I do not own them. I guide them, I help them, I love them. That is my job. I am their mother NOT their owner.

I am proud of my daughter for deciding what was right for her and being willing to share her story with others and confront abortion stigma. There are plenty of people who wish to make her be ashamed and remain silent. She is rejecting that. She is refusing to be shamed by those who wrap their shaming in a guise of Christian love too (if she wants your prayer or thinks she needs forgiveness she’ll call you). As a mother and woman of color I will continue to strive to make sure no one ever has the right to tell my children or anyone else when, how, and if they procreate. As a people we have already been there done that and it didn’t work out well.

Below is a copy of the speech my daughter wrote and gave at the rally on 8/17/13. In case anyone asks I advised her against going public with her story but she said and I quote “I want girls like me to know it’s ok and they will be ok”.  Since she has went public the libelous slurs against my daughter and our family have already started. Kayla says she doesn’t care she wants other girls to know all their options and that they don’t have to be ashamed.  That is what she tells girls when they come to her for help. We then refer them where they need to go including if they need a doctor and a doula for their birth. That’s the thing about supporting women’s reproductive health and well being you have to support a range of decisions not just what you would choose.

“Hello my name is Kayla, I am 15 years old and I had an abortion. The day I found out I was pregnant I was scared and ashamed because I was 15 and pregnant. I had a big choice to make-should I stay pregnant, chose adoption, or have an abortion.
I cried because I want to be a mom one day but I was not ready for such a huge step at such a young age. So I chose to have an abortion. I was scared but I knew I was doing the right thing.
Did I feel sad? Yes. Do I regret it? No! Because I know that the spirit I named Mariah will go on to a woman who is ready for her. I love my mom for being so supportive of my choice- I love her for that.
For all the young ladies that might have been or will be in this situation- you are not alone. There are people who support you-always. Even when you don’t know it. Abortion is not a bad thing, it’s a lifesaver! I can now be who I need to be and I know God still loves me! Thank you.”

Kayla Roberts
Clinic Escort, Young Feminist

Leading And Loving (classism in liberal organizations)

(This was first published in the Jackson Free Press on August 7, 2013 the online version is available by clicking the hyperlink)
My lower middle-class grandparents' status largely shielded me from class issues. I grew up the only child of a single mother, and it wasn't until I was on my own as a teenaged wife and mother that class restraints became real. They started to weigh heavily on me. Among other things, I learned the rules of who the "proper" people are for certain jobs in the restaurants where I worked, and I saw the class lens through which some view young mothers.

#As an activist (and a real-life poor person), I am offended when I have to deal with classism within the liberal political and social-justice organizations I work with. If organizations think they can serve populations that their board members, directors or staff can't or won't speak with or listen to, they are in the wrong business. If an organization attempts to serve oppressed populations or low-income people but doesn't have representatives of those groups within the operation, it has failed.

#I am tired of hearing conversations within liberal circles about how uneducated some people are in Mississippi, and this is why we should worry about who votes. Our educational system isn't perfect, but I want to challenge those who make such arguments. They come dangerously close to the arguments made for literacy tests and voter disenfranchisement during Jim Crow, and they aren't something one should put into the social discourse.

#If voters are uneducated on issues, it is our job to reach out, not to further alienate them. We live in a state that is trying to disenfranchise voters—we don't need political parties, through their speech and actions, actively discouraging people from participating in the process. 
If either party wishes to broaden its base, it would do well to stop demonizing poor and working-class people and, instead, try talking to us. We are nice people. We're just as good—and as bad—as middle- and upper-class people, and we, too, want to understand the issues that affect us.

#No one can afford to write off whole groups of people from the social and political discourse of this country. That's a losing strategy, especially with more and more people falling into poverty. For people on my side of the political spectrum, I strongly urge caution: You cannot be "on the side" of poor people and personally practice elitism.

#"You can't lead the people if you don't love the people," Cornel West said. "You can't save the people if you don't serve the people."

#West is right. But he means all the people, not just the ones that society long ago chose as the "right" ones.

A note on 9/11

Today is the anniversary of 9/11 media outlets will spend the day trying to milk our country's collective sorrow and pain for every bit of ratings it's worth.

I can do without TV stations replaying a moment by moment, as it happened 9/11 remembrance. We can still remember without doing that. I don't think it serves any function but to make us scared. The mass media likes scared. Capitalism likes scared. Scared people tend to buy things and stay glued to our TVs which means we watch commercials.

Well media I remember exactly how scared I was that day. So scared in fact that my children were running late for school and I decided to keep them home thinking the end of world was happening.
So scared I called one of my best friends Addison asking "what the hell is going on".

I remember making my kids huddle on my bedroom floor with me for about a half hour as I had a panic attack. Yes I was THAT scared even though I was in Indiana. Not really a big terrorist target. Yet it felt like it was the end of the world and media helped make it feel that way.

No MSNBC and others I don't need your yearly trigger. I don't need Facebook and Twitter posts to tell me to "Never Forget". I won't forget nor do I need to see graphic photos to remember.

I do know since that time I have grown. I know that one act of terror doesn't give us the right to hate or to blow up whole counties making innocent civilians and families feel the same pain as we did and still do.

I know I am not as sure as I once was that charging into countries to "teach them a lesson" is such a good idea. I am much more of a pacifist.

Today we can commemorate those lost without reliving our pain minute by minute. The lessons we need to take away from 9/11 happened leading up to that horrible day and in it's aftermath. Lessons that in the wake of what is going on in Syria what we need to be even more focused on.

Thankful for the small things

When I came home from church yesterday my mom and I were talking about how one of the reasons I was able to question the fundamentalist evangelical church I attended as a child is my aunts Julie and Cindy would openly defy the rules and give me things I wasn't allowed to have. (background my mother stayed in the church largely due to my grandparents influence and the fact we lived with them and/or by them).
On my 6th birthday my aunt Julie decided to get my ears pierced. My mother didn't object she just pretended not to know so my grandmother would yell at my aunt and not her. It was a full 2 days before my grandmother noticed and then all hell broke loose. She insisted my mother remove them and let my ears heal and my mother simply said "no she likes them and they aren't hurting anything". Thus I got to keep my earrings.
Julie also bought me my first pair of pants that year, turquoise blue sweatpants with white strips on the sides. I LOVED those pants! I couldn't wear them in public because I wasn't allowed but I hated taking them off. I wanted to wear them everyday even under my ankle length prairie dresses. In fact I wore them all the time for two years. The poor things had been patched so many times they were clearly rags and they were almost the length of walking shorts.
One may wonder why pants were so meaningful to a six year old girl but I remembered as I sat talking to my mother what I felt when I put them on. I felt free! Free to play and do things I had sat and watched other kids do but I couldn't because they weren't "ok for girls to do". Pants meant I could climb on monkey bars and flip upside down on the swing. Wearing pants meant I didn't have to constantly worry about how I was sitting. I could just be a kid, play and have fun.
My aunt Cindy understood this because at her house she often threw me in my cousin Jason's clothes and sent me out to play. Then I could get dirty, run, tumble, and just BE without worrying about that stupid bulky skirt getting in the way.
In this moment of reflection I remembered how thankful I was for such small things. How joyous those that seemingly small change felt. Often when I am doing the work I do I have to remember that "small things" matter. Many times your small things are really big things to the people who receive them.

Fat shaming-JUST STOP IT!

Today something happened to me that rarely does-something on social media triggered memories and made me cry. I had just woke up and opened my Facebook page and there it was a picture of a plus size women in a club with the caption "this bitch killed my vibe".  It was on a close friend's page so I posted several comments asking what it was this woman had done that was so offensive that she needed to be publicly shamed on the web. Eventually my friend posted that she had hit on him while he was with his girlfriend (oh the horror). I then asked did he post the pictures of skinny women who hit on him in clubs too. Not surprisingly, I didn't get a response. I decided to flip though a few more of his pics and there was a picture of a older chubby woman sitting alone eating at Raising Cane's (it's a chicken fingers place) the caption read "this is what I had to see at lunch". That picture and caption made me angry and it made me cry.

outside the state capitol -FABULOUS 

2006 Miss Phi Beta Sigma Pageant at JSU-GORGEOUS! 

I am a plus size woman. I am not ashamed or embarrassed by my size. In fact I just wrote a column about this very kind of thing. I just didn't expect to see it from a close friend. While I am confident in who I am it doesn't stop the days when people say cruel and nasty things about my weight. The attacks come from strangers, family, friends, co-workers, and health care professionals. Like the ER doctor who needed to give me a pelvic exam and told me "I think you might be too heavy for that gurney and make it tip. Can you scoot down and see". When I-naked from the waist down covered in a sheet-did scoot down and it tipped he shouted into the hall. "Yeah she's too big we need the OTHER gurney." To this day I don't understand why he couldn't just get the other one to begin with. Oh wait because I'm fat therefore less than human.

So I expect maybe people can understand why when I see people fat shame on social media often I recognize myself in those posts. Sometimes I see the people I love.

Mum and I-Dynamic Duo

See I am the child of larger woman. When I talk about fat shaming I don't only speak from a place of my own pain I speak from a place of watching strangers be unspeakably cruel to my mother for my entire life. Not only was I teased about my mother's weight but we were constantly stared at in public. There were always comments, gestures and general rudeness. There were the people who thought they meant well "you have such a pretty face it's a shame you're so fat". Then there were the people who were just cruel "who got her pregnant?". There were the racists "of course she has a black kid who else would want her". There were the people who thought my mom ate my food and that's why I was thin.  Oh and the people with no boundaries at all who would take things out of her cart at the store and say "you don't need that".

None of those people bothered to get to know my mother. They didn't find out that she was a great person who read to her daughter everyday, took her to the library every week, sewed her own clothes, is a professional level seamstress, that she has a beautiful singing voice or any of the other things that makes her a awesome person. They just saw her size and deemed her unworthy to exist in their space (I am still scratching my head on this concept). She was automatically less than they were in their eyes.

Now I'm a mother of seven children, six of them girls. I cringe every time my daughter who is a size 8 says she is getting "fat". Every time some one tells one of my girls they are "too big". When my 10 year old uttered the words "I think I need to go on a diet" it crushed my heart-she is thin as a rail. When asked why she said "because dieting is healthy". Super double facepalm mommy fail on the-healthy eating is healthy-NOT dieting.  I want them to know and understand they are all beautiful active young healthy women. Their bodies are perfect the way they are.

It all takes me back to the first time I drank Slim Fast because I felt I needed to lose weight when I was 7. The first time I counted calories when I was nine. The big one is first time I started not eating and throwing up my food to help control my weight at 12. At 12 I was a figure skater and figure skaters can't be fat.

4th place in skating competition-age 13

So  I worked really hard at not being fat. I also spent a lot of time hating my body. All that got me was mentally and physically ill. I hide my self hate and my activities. My mother doesn't even know now I use to purge that's how secretive I was. That beautiful girl in the above picture felt fat and ugly everyday. I wish I could reach back and tell her that her body was fine. That this how a society obsessed with fat shaming and thinness makes young women feel.

For my daughters and my son I fight fat shaming. I do it for them because I do not want them to live with the pain of self hate or miss the company of wonderful people due to size bias. Clearly body shaming doesn't only affect women yet it is harsher on women so for me it's a huge feminist issue. How am I a free person when I can't dress how I wish and freely go about my life without being the target of hate and contempt?

My challenge- the challenge for all of us is to ask why we feel the need to judge the appearance of others. What inside of us makes us so contemptuous of other people's bodies? We need not kid ourselves that it is about fat people's health because not all fat people are unhealthy. If it were about health people would harass others for a whole host of unhealthy behaviors-for the most part we don't. Let's stop acting like it's about what is morally/socially acceptable as far as fashion. Since if I put two pics up of women in the same revealing outfit one thin-one plus size, the thin one may be slut shamed the plus size one will absolutely be body shamed and slut shamed. The outfit will be deemed absolutely indecent for one not for the amount of flesh showing but the amount of fat flesh showing. Here in lies the problem. Who are any of us to say things like "no one wants to see that"-someone does. Lastly, I am FAT if you have a problem with that YOU deal with it- I'm fine.