I rose.

On Saturday, 21st January 2017, I became an active part of history.

On the morning of that day, I was full of nerves, full of self-doubt. Never before had I felt strongly enough about anything to "take to the streets".

Was I doing it for the right reasons? Was I doing it at all? Why now? What's so important this time?

I don't like crowds of people. I find people, en mass, to be scared, excitable beings, prone to being startled into stampeding. That scares me. Quite substantially.

What scares me more, however, is the idea that the sexism, misogyny, racism, intolerance, disrespect will continue to worsen over the next four years. That I cannot abide.

I set aside my personal reservations and applied my lipstick (my Lips of Power) that morning with a false resolve I hoped would solidify into the real thing.

I tried to buoy myself on the journey into London. In the car, I felt an unease, a low almost thrumming in my chest that always signals an impending panic attack. The feeling never abated but it also never grew, for which I was grateful.

My early morning thoughts before applying my Lips of Power.

We parked, walked to a place to have lunch and I tried not to shove my food down my throat too quickly - I was anxious and just wanted to get going. Now that I had committed and was so close, I just wanted to be there.

Finally, we were on our way. We joined the marching and I was plainly relieved when the tight crowd parted to allow inclusion for even more supporters.

No one was angry. No one was shouting foul language. Everyone was smiling at each other, showing solidarity, kinship, welcome.

I saw people of every description that day. Every age group. Every shade and colour of skin. Every gender. Every physical ability. As far as I could see, everyone was represented and London, my darling London, the "melting pot" that it is, truly did her citizens proud.

We marched to Trafalgar Square, which was already packed. Sandi Toksvig spoke briefly, though, I'm not really sure what she said as the sound system wasn't robust enough for the message she was trying to convey, the quality of her words had diminished so much by the time it reached us that what she had said was unintelligible to us in the back.

Sandi left the stage and we were lead in a rendition of Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" - I will forever think of the 21st of January 2017 when I hear the words "I got all my sisters with me".

The song, the thousands of voices joined in expressing the perfect sentiment, was what finally broke through all of my reserve.

I'm not ashamed to say: I cried. I wept. In public.

I didn't cry for long, however. I was reminded of the reasons I was there, the reasons others were there, the reasons that so many people left their comfortable homes on a bright, cold Saturday to show solidarity, to show unwillingness to accept, to publicly decry injustices that have fallen as well as the fear of future offences.

I took one photo, the one at the top. One solitary photo. I was too enveloped in the scenes, the emotions before me to worry about getting a snapshot. I didn't need to take any pictures. There are plenty of photographers who are better than I at capturing crowds who have captured thousands of images of the day. From marches all around the world, images of my sisters, my brothers, all my siblings, worldwide who rose that day.

We decided we should leave the rally and find warmth, find food. I had done what I had set out to accomplish. I had proven, if only to myself, that what is happening in the world, what is happening in the country of my birth, was not something I could sit idly by and allow my silence to imply agreement or acceptance.

I do not accept. I do not sit. I rose and I will rise. I will go high.

I will ever send all of my love and my gratitude to every single person who made that day possible.

If you want to know what my reasons are, please feel free to ask. This, however, is not the place for my reasons for marching, so I have left them aside.

I now have another box.

Traditionally, I am ever the optimist. I am easily led from sadness or melancholy and straight back into, if not happiness, then comfort, certainly.

I have finally built a life around me that means I can be this way. I can be happy. I am happy.

I have found a system that works for me when it comes to Bad Things in my life. When they arise, as they always will; it's Life, after all - I simply deal with the emotions and thoughts straight away then move on. I do not have enough time on this earth to be dealing with negative thoughts or emotions any longer than absolutely necessary. I have too much good I want to do. There is too much fun to be had.

But, as with everyone, there are things in my past, things in my history which are not happy. Memories, thoughts, feelings, events, circumstances that I cannot move past.

I put these things into Boxes. Boxes in my mind that store the things with which I don't want to deal, the things with which I am, to varying degrees, frightened would break me.

Some of the boxes are doodle-covered cardboard, covered in dust, simply taped shut. Eventually, I think, I might open them and see what comes out. Thankfully, I don't have many of these boxes.

Some of the boxes are solid metal chests with locks of the kind Houdini couldn't even open. I have two of these boxes and I hope I've lost the keys.

Sadly, a new box was installed yesterday.

I don't yet know what it looks like as I keep wilfully ignoring its presence, hoping it will go away.

I know what the box contains, I can hear it whisper to me in the quiet moments, taunting me - the Thing inside still so new that it hasn't yet learned its place, its fate inside that box.

But I don't want to know. Not now. I might not ever.

There's a Thing inside a new Box and it's calling to me and I refuse to look for the key.

Break the cycle

I vividly remember lessons taught by my mother when I was small... "Look both ways"... "Don't be a nuisance"... "Don't bump into people... "Don't eat yellow snow"... "Orange juice before you brush your teeth"... "She deserved it"...

Learning these early lessons, I was a very careful child.

I made sure I took up as little space as possible. I always moved out of the way when someone entered my space so as not to bump into or hinder them in any way.

I never ate yellow snow. (Though, lemon ices/slushies still confuse me!)

Other lessons that my mother taught me, not through vocalisation, but through actions, were that women are competition; women are moody; women are unacceptable, you can't be friends with a woman; women should be avoided, be friends with men - or women who act like men - it's so much easier.

Throughout adolescence and early adulthood, I believed this. This was my truth as demonstrated by the friendships I spurned, the women I insulted, spread rumours about, took delight in talking about behind their backs... Women I didn't even know. Gossip-fuelled bitch-fests being like a mainstay in my life.

I was headed down the same path of my mother, virtually friend-less because I doubted anyone could ever be friends with a woman. How horrid the thought; they're crazy!

I still remember my father and his wife sitting me down when I was about 13 (ish?) and asking me about the notes in my junior high school yearbook. I had defiled it. There were angry notes and scribbles all over the inside of it, denoting some fellow students as "bitch"es, "slut"s and worse. A friend and I had sat and determined the personality of every single female student one day and she suggested we spend the day graffitiing my yearbook. We wrote nasty words, blacked out faces in indelible ink and did so with utter conviction that not only were our actions justified but that they were necessary! (I never even questioned why we used my yearbook but that's a post for a self-esteem/self-awareness session, I guess.) My father found my yearbook and was horrified that I had done such a thing, that I had such thoughts.

I remember distinctly dismissing his concern as nothing. What could possibly be wrong with my behaviour, these women were bitches and sluts! Obviously! Look at how they had treated me!

Except...

They never had treated me. I now cannot recall a single moment when any of those women had anything negative to say to me, hurt me in any way emotionally or physically - I can't even remember a single dirty look.

Now that I am older, I wish - oh, how I wish - someone had sat me down and told me that it didn't have to be that way - that women aren't inherently bitches - or sluts - or anything of the sort... They're not competition...

I understand the insecurities that lead my mother to feel the way she does, to believe the vitriol that she's been fed for decades by the misogynists in her life.

I understand it.

I do not accept it.

I refuse to follow in the footsteps of my misogynist mother. My mother who is bitter and alone and who firmly believes that she's friendless at this stage in her life simply because of the attitudes of others - unable to even contemplate that she, herself, has pushed them all away over the years, made them feel unwanted, insulted them and gossiped about them behind their backs and, sometimes, even insulted them directly to their faces.

My daughter is learning the value of female friendship and I am trying my hardest to lead by example.

It's not going to cure the world overnight of sexism but if I can help women learn to love and support one another, it has to help, right?

I will break the cycle.

#notallwhitewomen

If you have used the term "not all white women", please, for the love of all that is feminist, don't you dare EVER slam a man for saying "not all men"! 

Because the thing is, some white women DID. Many white women did. TOO MANY WOMEN DID. 

The MAJORITY of white women who voted chose racial familiarity over feminism, let that be crystal clear. 

When you attempt to make yourself feel better by saying "not all white women" you demean the very things that WoC have been rallying for, been fighting for, been dying for. And, let me tell you something, JUST LIKE the "not all men" BS, TOO FUCKING MANY DID. And, like it or not, those white women are our sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins. 

We, us white women, are responsible for this. ALL OF US. We need to do better. We failed. We didn't do enough. 

We had a responsibility to speak with our white sisters, to help them understand the ramifications of their opinions, of their apathy, of their actions, of their prejudices, of their racism, of their privilege. We are to blame. All of us. 

When you "not all white women" you create even more "otherness" and that's the opposite of what we need right now. We need to rally. 

We need to rally and we need to apologise to every single marginalised society today, because we have hurt them and we have failed them.

Now, all of you; please be safe, please be love.

Living in simpler times.

From time to time, I used to lament that I wished we could go back. I wished we could go back in time to when things were simpler, “easier” and I’ve just realised how rude and offensive that that sentiment actually is.

From now on, please let it be known:

I, for one, do not long for simpler times.

They were horridly racist and misogynist… Full of damaging “otherness”.

I embrace our current, complicated lives where the Powers That Be are challenged.

I embrace the hard work it will take to remove the centuries of oppression that people have faced.

I embrace the hard work it will take to remove the centuries of oppression that people are facing. Today. Every day.

I don’t want an easy life if it means that my children and their children will face the same challenges that we face.

I don’t want an easy life if it means that any child will face the same challenges.

That’s the cowards’ way out.

I am scared, but I am not a coward.

I do not long for simpler times. I won’t have it. I will not go quietly into the night.

I will fight. I will rage. I will persevere because people deserve better.

People deserve better and I know we can make it happen. 

I was going to do these as a series of tweets but, it’s too big for that. I had too much to say. I didn’t want to be hemmed by character limits.

It's OK.

I have needed to write this for myself for some time now.

I hereby give myself permission not to write.

Yes. I am allowed to not write.

How scary is that?!

Since this time last year, I have taken an unintentional hiatus from my writing - and felt wretchedly guilty about it the entire time.

I stopped taking a specific medicine I was on for reasons in October of 2015 and have struggled since then to get my head back into the process of writing. It's like that part of my brain has been temporarily suspended. (I say "temporarily" because I do plan on resuming the medication in the medium-distant future.)

I am tired of feeling guilty for not putting words down, creating those magical sentences that seem to come from thin air... I'm tired of wondering if I'm good enough, if I'm actually a writer if I'm not actually writing. Well, I am and I'm not. I am a writer. I am a writer who is currently not writing.

And I am OK with that.

Or, I am trying to be OK with that.

Because it's a choice. I have chosen to take this particular path at this particular time in my life and, if a temporary side effect is that I don't write for a relatively short while in the grand scheme of things while I take this journey, then that's OK. It will be worth it. Hopefully.

But most importantly, in the mean time, I won't feel guilty about not writing. It's OK that I am not currently writing. I am doing something else. Something important. And the writing will be there when I am ready and able to get back to it.

Buffalo Popcorn

This is not, in any way, an advertisement or affiliated post. The views expressed herein are my own and I have not been paid or remunerated in any fashion for what is to follow.

I am a huge fan of flavoured popcorn.

Huge.

If, like me, you have ever tried to make flavoured popcorn then it's likely that you've learned the pitfalls of adding a water-based flavour to popcorn and the resulting disaster.

This was something I learned when I tried to follow a simple recipe I'd found online for popcorn made with Frank's Hot Sauce. 

I'm a huge fan of Frank's and thought it would be an amazing addition to popcorn. I followed the recipe to the letter and, as my soggy, deflated kernels baked in the oven, I knew something wasn't right. 

The recipe I had found instructed that the popcorn be made, tossed in Frank's sauce and then baked to sort of set the flavouring on the kernels. 

What I had created, however, was spicy, wet popcorn. It was disappointingly soggy and gross. 

Further research indicated that adding water-based liquid to popcorn will cause it to deflate (duh!) but that oil-based liquids add flavour without causing the sogginess. It's because of this that butter-flavoured popcorn is so popular: kernels are flavoured but remain light and fluffy.

Still wanting Frank's popcorn, I was left with a dilemma: how to get the flavour of the sauce without the accompanying wetness/water.

I've had a popcorn epiphany!

I warmed my oven to "barely warm" (125C/250F), spread some Frank's onto some baking paper and placed it into the oven. Once the Frank's had completely dried out, I removed it and placed it into a resealable plastic food bag. I repeated this step once more to ensure I had enough flavour.

Using a pestle and mortar, I ground up the "sauce" to pulverise it a bit as the pieces were too large for adding to my popcorn.

I then added some garlic granules and a dash of table salt.

And ground that all together.

Popped my popcorn as usual...

Then tossed the popcorn in some of the flavour mix to coat... (the rest of the mix is waiting for my next batch of popcorn! If you'd like some more detailed measurements of ingredients, please shout. I certainly will be making this again so wouldn't mind writing things down this time.)

 I have to say, it was delicious!

Now, I wonder what other flavours I could be adding to my popcorn!