Full Credit For Being Alive

"How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five. Opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.

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Watch: President Obama delivers pointedly feminist speech at United State of Women summit

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😭

[notnadia]

can he stay i mean like

[live-to-the-point-of-tears]

CAN HE STAY.

[textsfromhillaryclinton]

Couldn’t help it. One more text from Hillary.

Original image by Kevin Lamarque for Reuters.

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Can you share some of your pro tips/advice for your travels on your honeymoon? I'm trying to plan a trip to Southeast Asia with my partner and there's so many things I want to see/do, but I'm wondering how to pull it all together.

Uh, buy your tickets a week before you leave and then pay a travel agent a ton of money to plan it all for you because you’re so overwhelmed with grief and emotion that you can’t even handle making a dinner reservation? Because that’s basically how we planned ours. 

(Some actual tips: do 4 cities max, schedule at least one free night in each place to just wander around and explore the temples and markets, and seriously consider hiring a guide if you go to Angkor Wat/Angkor Thom.)

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Workouts For When You Are Grieving, Ranked

Hot yoga. Face sweat hides tears. 

Boxing. Pretend the bag is whatever killed your loved one. Especially recommended for the anger stage of grief. 

Walking. Put on your sunglasses and your loved one’s favorite album. You’ll hit 10,000 steps in no time. 

Specialty spinning studios. Dark rooms and a cult-like atmosphere? Sounds good, as long as you don’t actually join the cult.

Running. As much as it’s touted as being therapeutic, crying while running can make you throw up. 

Barre workouts. Bright lights, individualized attention, and sad songs during stretching segments. Only recommended if you are trying to bury your feelings. 

Swimming. If you cry while swimming, you may actually drown.

Sitting quietly in a dark room while not moving and calling it “meditating.” This will make you go insane. Trust me. 

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It’s no secret to people who have been reading this blog for a while that my relationship with my mom had a lot of issues. She suffered for years (many of them undiagnosed) of mental illness, and it would cause her to either lash out or retreat inward. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t handle either well. I spent years angry and bitter that I didn’t have the mom that I remembered from my childhood, setting aside the fact that she was probably the same person then but I just was too young to realize it. She called me mean, I called her manipulative, and we fought. My god, we fought. 

But underlying all of those fights, all of that anger, was love. I know she knew it, and I knew it, too. When we wouldn’t speak for a day -- just a day! -- because we were too angry at each other, it felt interminable. When she called me a name, it was like a literal punch in the gut, because it was coming from the person who knew me the best, the person who was absolutely right. And I know that I made her feel the same. And even during the worst times, when just the thought of the last thing she or I had done to each other made us shake with rage, a simple phone call or text message where we tried to put it all behind us was a salve to even the deepest wound. 

We spent the last three months of her life -- those terrible, stressful, painful three months -- making sure we knew how we felt. It was anything but easy, of course, but it was there. We apologized for our years of being in bad relationships, with others and with each other. We explained away our fights, we said we didn’t mean what we said way back when. We told each other everything we had meant to say but didn’t. And what we said the most, what we said a thousand times a day, was “I love you.” It was one of the last few sentences she could utter as she lay on her death bed, morphine finally easing her excruciating pain, me at her side. In the final hours before she died, when she lost the ability to speak, I sat next to her, holding her hand, telling her how much I loved her over and over again. The hospice nurses told us that hearing is the last sense to go, and I like to believe that she left us with my voice in her head, telling her that no matter what happened, no matter what we did, our unending love, our undying love, would be there forever.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you. 

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WEDDING PHOTOS BACK

If I had to pick one to frame, it would be this: 

[danceivyou]

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Solange dressed up as a lemon. These two are perfect. 

[jovan]

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Lemonade! You gotta talk about it!

Let me just leave it at this: 

Over the past few days, I’ve loved seeing people who I already dislike posting something negative about Lemonade. Thank you for validating that I am an excellent judge of character. 

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On Sunday, we celebrated the amazing and ridiculous life of my mother. My cousins put together an incredible event that celebrated her in ways I couldn’t even have imagined. We played music that she loved, shared stories about her past, and honored her memory. 

A little more than three months later, we’re finally finished with the things that most people do in the week after someone dies. We cleaned out her apartment in March. We’ve settled all of her bills and accounts. We finally memorialized her passing. Which leaves me with one final question: 

What am I supposed to do now? 

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RIP, Prince. 

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My mom gave me The Catcher in the Rye on my 14th birthday. She read it when she was 14, and as a headstrong teenager living in Manhattan, it spoke to her in ways nothing else ever had. (She used to joke that Holden Caulfield was her first love. I'm not sure it was that much of a joke.) To her, that I would read this book was so important. It meant that I was growing up, that I was passing from the innocence of youth into the cynicism of adolescence. It meant that I was becoming my own person. It meant that we were becoming friends.

My mom's birthday is on Tuesday. I think I'll spend it in Central Park, sitting by the pond, feeding the ducks.

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Thoughts on #equalpayday as an attorney working in NYC?

Being an attorney or working in NYC has nothing to do with it. It’s disgraceful that we live in a society that touts its technological and cultural advances while still paying a full half of its citizens significantly less, on average, than the other half, based on literally nothing other than what lies between their legs. The fact that this has been reduced to a hashtag, especially one that can be capitalized on by socially media-savvy brands (many of whom, I imagine, are part of the problem), is shameful. 

It’s 2016. How are we still talking about this? 

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Best place/s in the city to have a romantic dinner for say, a couple that might elope on a random weekday?

Congrats! I’d recommend having dinner at a really special restaurant, not an everyday “date night” sort of place. Also, since you’re going on a weekday, you may find it easier to get a reservation at these places. Here are some options, and if anyone has any other suggestions feel free to leave them as a reply (!!!): 

Del Posto

Marea

One If By Land, Two If By Sea (<-- fun Hamil-fact, this was once Aaron Burr’s carriage house)

River Cafe

Blue Hill (or, if you REALLY want to kick it up a notch, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, but that’s not in the city)

Il Buco

Kyo Ya

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Today, I am cleaning out my work inbox after several months of neglecting it (and, to be honest, pretty much everything else). I just got to an email my boss sent me after he found out that my mom was sick. He said in the email that his sister had the same diagnosis and that she lived for another four years. 

I remember reading his email while I was waiting to pick up her new, stronger oxycodone prescription. I cried -- sobbed, really -- in the CVS waiting area, thinking that I knew he meant well, but how could I possibly only have four more years with my mom. 

I didn’t even have four more months. 

I am so jealous. 

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I am incredibly sorry for your loss. Unrelated (sorry for the bad transition), I am going to NYC for a weekend with my dude and want to hit some cool places (good views, good food, cool scene) and I was wondering if you could give me some suggestions? If possible, not touristy. Thanks!

Eat at Upland, Desnuda, or Il Buco Alimentari

Visit the Whitney

Drink at Booker and Dax, d.b.a, or Marshall Stack

Walk on the High Line or the Manhattan Bridge

Watch Fun Home

Hug your family 

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~*~relationship goals~*~

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