I can relate to that post-therapy finding-something-you-don’t-hate part. My mother was not conventionally attractive, and hated most people who were. My father is, or used to be before the alcohol and drugs took their toll, and I am also (and was when I was little). But my mother would always sneer when she described…

Oh, that’s infuriating! In our case, I often say “we need to do X from now on” when he’s the sole person doing not doing it, because he’s so fucking prickly about criticism (thanks to his ultra-critical batshit mother) that if I indicate in any way that it’s HE who is not doing something he should be doing, we have a…

Drowned rat, ha! I love it. That’s how I feel like too when my hair is straightened, or like I suddenly have a really small head.

GAH stylists indeed! I have a version of what I’ve seen referred to as “rich girl hair” (it comes out of my head glossy and wavy), but I have about twice as much hair on my head as a normal person does (in my current stylist’s words) and it’s very thick, and the effect is apparently terrifyingly ethnic or feral or…

Oh my goodness, this is embarrassing for me so I have to confess it. I’m an American (now very recently a Canadian too) living in Canada and I thought they were Tommy Hilfiger blankets for some reason. It seems to be trendy in my neighborhood for people to put them over their babies’ Uppababy Vistas, and every time I…

It definitely helped my husband, since he got Canadian citizenship, a notice that he won the American green card lottery, and a new job in quick succession. With me, I’m not sure. The health issue (knock on wood) seems to be clearing up now, about seven months later. Maybe it made me more positive or something, or…

I’ve seen these as a kid looking outside my kitchen window in New Jersey! Nobody would ever believe me. Off to google....

My husband is from a tribal nation in Central Asia, and they have a similar tradition where they make fried bread called shelpek (kind of like fry bread, actually) on Thursdays for ancestor spirits. They pray and give it to the ancestor spirits and then eat the bread or give it away to other people. He and I do it…

I kept my name too, and my husband kept his and we gave it to our two-year-old son. I felt a pang and still kind of do, especially since our kid’s middle name is “son-of-Mr.-Chortcake” in Mr. Chortcake’s language. I gave in partly because I had first dibs on the first name and partly because I grew up mixed with…

I have a Polish-sounding (actually Belarusian) last name that begins with a Z. I feel your pain! But I married someone with a multisyllabic last name also starting with a Z, so my dreams of marrying someone with a short name beginning with A were crushed.

Thank you!

Oh, no, I didn’t mean to give the wrong impression! My parents absolutely passed down fat-shaming to me (my father made it clear that any woman who wasn’t extremely thin, which I wasn’t, or who was very curvy, which I was, wasn’t a worthy human being, my mother used to sing hippie songs about letting your stomach be…

YES! OK, I don’t know why, but I seem to be one of the few people I know who was raised with an implicit knowledge that women’s bodies can be all over the map postpartum, and that a larger midsection can mean anything, like that’s just the way the person is shaped, or that person had a baby, or that person has a…

That is beautiful. You are awesome.

I got literally chased out of a fabric shop at 35 weeks because the assistant there was “sure” I was going to go into labor at any minute because I was so “big.” (I was induced at 41 weeks, so, no.) Another time, when my gigantic three-month-old baby was in his stroller and we were going for a walk, these two ladies…

YES. I always say this, plus “how are you doing?” That way people can talk about their pregnancy if they want, or something else if they’d prefer.

I got this too, so much. If I’m ever pregnant again (which I may not be able to be), I will say, “yes, fuckface, I’m sure. ARE YOU MY DOCTOR? NO??? Well then.”

I have two giant fibroids that didn’t interfere with conception (which was immediate) or pregnancy at all, but they plus a really tall baby who was low and in front meant I showed early and a lot. I got So. Much. Trolling. from random strangers that it made me afraid to leave the house. Even from pregnant strangers,…

Yes! This has wrecked my life. I had three completely unnecessary, unfounded cancer scares in the Canadian healthcare system (each time it was, “it could be bad. You’ll get an MRI/biopsy/etc. in four months/nine months/three months”), all while having PPD thanks to bad medical care during and after pregnancy. In the…

Or, that a dress like that should be $235 AND that most people’s salaries won’t allow for it.