Blog

“I have very, very adventurous kids who love to explore, go to parties, and try stuff, the kind of acting out that some teenagers do."

If you think about penguins, where they live, and what they go through to conduct their lives, it's pretty astonishing.

“The message sent to me was that this was not to be talked about…it didn't feel like a safe place to share…I wasn't going to be believed, be

Brigitte’s parents fled for safety. Her father carried his little brother on his back while they were fleeing Palestine.

“We were taught that we shouldn't eat too much, especially the girls...he would side glance and tsk, tsk if you had dessert..."

“Was I so desirable that you have to lock me away, or am I completely fat and ugly and undesirable?"

“For years I lived with the guilt that I had done something wrong, that I had invited it in, that it was something to do with my behavior."

“Anyone who's Mormon will tell you there is Mormon. And then there's Utah Mormon. And then there is BYU, Utah Mormon.

“You name the bad decision, I made it…abusive relationships, drug addiction, alcoholism. I was just a wreck.”

Frontier Grit contains stories of women of color and all sorts of walks of life.

“It's hard for any child to be the only one in a category, and the more visible your category is, the more alienating it can be."

“I put pen to paper for the first time when I was 35, and I had my first novel published when I was 45."

“Traditional medicine definitely has its place, but it doesn’t help the body heal. It just suppresses the symptoms.”

“I don’t think people understand that when you go through loss after loss, after you see a heartbeat, it’s such a heavy grief.”

We’ve been through so much together. Trauma changes you. I’m grateful that we decided to grow together.

“Grief is a time when you need your friends to be there, and when they left, that dumped a whole new pile of grief on me.”

I’ve built the community that I wish was there for me, making dance accessible regardless of whether you want to be a professional or not.

Before my 18th birthday, I realized that once I turned 18 I would be legally classified as a woman, and I was just really horrified at that.

Walking into an office as just Joy, it is the most liberating thing, and I will never go back.

I have never felt like I belonged in any of my roles. I’ve never felt like I’ve belonged in an organization, and that needs to change.