The Resolute Woman

Category: balance

  • No news—for a few days

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    resolutewoman
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    Recently, before we left for Arkansas, I declared a ban on news. I didn’t want to hear anything about what was happening in Washington. But, news today seeps through our cell phones, and a complete ban was impossible. Still, it was refreshing to avoid the blare of news hounding me constantly from newspapers, radio and…

  • Respect and liberty

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    resolutewoman
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    “Let us imagine a world where women, freed from the grip of violence, flourish in respect and liberty.” Those words are part of a monument in Ottawa’s Minto Park. This monument is dedicated to the memory of women killed by men, Amal El-Mohtar explains in a review of Naomi Alderman’s book The Power in the…

  • Women’s empowerment?

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    resolutewoman
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    In her book The Power, Naomi Alderman explores “the more extreme results of a movement that seeks rather than interrogates power.” However, if feminism becomes a means of domination, “it has lost its way,” concludes a reviewer of the book in Vogue magazine.

  • Get some more sleep

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    resolutewoman
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    The American Heart Association estimates that one in seven Americans don’t get enough sleep every night. It recommends seven to nine hours of sleep to decrease “your risk of obesity, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, coronary heart disease and overall cardiovascular disease.” If you need more sleep, Nancy Brown, the AHA’s chief executive…

  • When anger is valuable

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    resolutewoman
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    The part of anger that tells you “this is wrong and shouldn’t happen again” is always valuable, says Martha Nussbaum, the author of a new book The Monarchy of Fear. However, Nussbaum adds, “To be angry has been an assertion of masculinity. Once you start looking at it, the issue of who’s ‘more emotional’ and…

  • What lies around the bend

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    resolutewoman
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    My mother was always optimistic. But, my father was not always as optimistic Sometimes, like my father, I slip toward the dark side and see the glass as half-empty and cover myself with depression. And, then, sometimes, I can talk to myself and convince myself that it is so much more pleasant to follow my…

  • A lesson for summer

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    resolutewoman
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    The posters for the new Winnie the Pooh movie announce a lesson that’s just right for hot summer days. “Don’t estimate the value of doing nothing,” Winnie the Pooh advises.

  • Wanting to belong

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    resolutewoman
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    Jhumpa Lahiri writes about what it means to be on the outside looking in. “It’s that desperation to want to belong—to not be all these pieces—to be concrete—to be at the same time one thing,” Lahiri told the audience at an Arts & Letters Live presentation in Dallas on January 30. Lahiri was born in…

  • The one who contributes nothing

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    resolutewoman
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    Remember the middle-school project? In her book Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine talks about the middle-school student who doesn’t do his–or it could be “her,” of course–share of the project. Everyone else works hard, but he doesn’t do anything. “And what if he didn’t care at all? What if he depended on us, even…

  • Let go

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    resolutewoman
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    You can’t control everything—although I often try to. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us,” Joseph Campbell once said. –Joy