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@thetinykalemonster-blog
Hello all ! I am about to graduate and for my capstone I made a website that allows users to input data about their fathers and their relationships to their fathers. Users can then see visualizations of the data that has been entered on fathers and play around with different filters to get and idea of how the father figure has changed over time and how it varies depending on different regions the people grew up in.
Check it out and contribute at:
http://daddyissues.io
I went through Survivor Support Training this weekend at my university. It’s a great program that teaches people about domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual abuse and how to help survivors.
It was a decision that I struggled with. I have kept myself educated on these topics and I have helped many friends in these situations but I feared it would hit too close to home.
And in some ways it did. I had this feeling at times that they were talking about me: what victims experience, how they respond, how they heal and develop. It felt as if I was holding on to this big balloon that said VICTIM on it in big black letters and that if I didn’t hold onto it, it’d float up and they’d all see. It was easier to talk about what friends had been through than my own experiences. It was easier to talk about my experiences as if they were someone else’s.
But I am glad I did it. There’s such a common process of unknowing victim blaming that occurs around these things and it’s not something we do maliciously (at least most of the time). It comes from a place of care, but the message is still clear: what did you not do to protect yourself? There is this weird umbrella of protection that seems to protect children from judgement (”they had not control”) but as soon as you hit a certain age (maybe 16, maybe 18) the responses turn into how you made incorrect choices and that led to your assault.
So what do we do with this? Honestly I don’t know. All we can do is try to be more aware of how we say things, how we react, and try to turn the conversation away from secondary prevention (don’t take drinks from strangers, don’t go to parties or walk home alone, carry mace) to primary prevention (don’t freaking assault someone!).
We miss you Laurel! :'( x
I am so sorry friend! I will be here for you, you lovely being you. Tell me how your life has been and what has been up. I have missed so much and I must catch up!
Hello All!
Yes, this is my first post in a very long time.
I always come back and watch from the sidelines - I like to see what all of you are doing and the amazing things you are up to.
So what’s been up? Here’s where I am at: I love this site. I love these people. I love the ability that Tumblr has to bring so many different people together and allow all of us to be joined over common passion or different lifestyles.
Over the past 5 months my idea of myself has entirely changed.
Let’s just be super transparent here: I come from a home where I saw scared to be around. I hated being at home. I resented my family for what they had done to me. I resented my mother for doing nothing, my sister for seeming to fall apart in front of my eyes and my father for being who he was. I resented myself for feeling the way I did about myself and not being stronger.
But this summer I stopped letting my life circumstances control me. I made some difficult decisions: ending a truly supportive and great relationship so that I could begin to build my life as an independent woman, reconnecting with my father because I just wanted to move on, confronting my issues with valuing myself based on how others valued me, working on the little cruel voices in my head.
The thing is there really isn’t any clear answer for these things. I had my dad tell me that he always saw me as the one in our little house of disfunction that could manage - handle the mess with empathy and strength. The thing is I’ve been told this many times but it was a strange experience being told this by the person that I saw as responsible for making me this way.
And that’s the thing that I have realized over this last summer: my experiences have definitely disabled me in some sense but they have also made me grow in so many ways. There’s nothing to be done about the past. We are here. But I might as well live a life that I want, a life that I enjoy.
So in my mind, it’s more about looking at the situation and figuring out what you can do now. I remember sitting in my room as a child promising myself over and over and over again that I would never forget. Promising myself that I wouldn’t grow up and forget and move on. But the reality is that that Laurel wasn’t happy. In fact, that Laurel was very depressed. And I don’t want to be that Laurel anymore; I don’t want to hold on to it anymore.
So while I know Little Laurel would be disappointed in me or hate me, I have to decide not to be Little Laurel anymore. She’s a part of me but she is not me.
So the content of this blog might change a bit. I’ll talk openly about the transitions I am going through and you can come to me and I will be here for you. I am being open with you and you can be open with me. I value all of you so much and sometimes you just need to see someone else who gets what you’re going through.
I’ve been thinking about many types of minorities and how that is interpreted and seen by the wider group of people. What exactly does it mean to be a minority? White, upperclass, privileged female and yet I still feel like the odd one. The one that doesn’t make sense. Being a woman may have to do with that but in my mind that is little of what it is about. Over my many years in the STEM fields I have become very accustomed to being the only female in a room and I don’t think I even fully identified myself as a “woman” until I went to college. I knew I was a female person but being a woman I find is a very different thing. It was only once I started being treated as a woman that I began to think about what that might mean and how that could impact me. it was like this thing that others just started to see in a moment and then I was one. A lot of this probably has to do with the sexual aspect of being a woman - being hit on, catcalled, treated as this odd entity that needs to be flattered. That I wasn’t used to and I wasn’t used to having another role to men. Going out for drinks would always have another connotation of what else he or I wanted and could never just be drinks. Or if it was that certainly had to be clarified at some point. And at first it was quite an offensive awakening. I wanted to hide my body. It was definitely unwanted attention but it also felt unwarranted - there was nothing I did to cause it so there was nothing I could do to stop it. But even before I was a woman, I felt out of place. It was only the moments of hanging around a campfire on the beach with my friends in high school on a Friday with people jumping over the fire, dancing, wandering into the water, that I felt equalized. Maybe it was partially the fact that it was at night, the stars were out, the fire was warm, but I didn’t feel like I was being judged. I didn’t feel stupid. You could just sit there and listen to everyone talk and just let it wash over you. I often try to get back to those moments in any place I can. It’s this feeling of feeling I am being watched, not in a creepy way, but people notice me and I am not able to hide myself. We all are a minority in one way or another or at least I find myself aligning with other people that share my background. Minorities come together and I found myself aligning myself with other that had been abused. It was something that I hadn’t even realized for the first 17 years of my life. I remember having a conversation with my friend at lunch - “I think I was abused” I didn’t even know if it was a fact or not. But I just had a feeling, I came to a moment when I realized that how I feel at home - scared - was not normal. Others weren’t feeling this way and there would have been no way for me to know before that. No one could have told me and even once I realized it I had constant moments of questioning myself - wondering if I was crazy or being dramatic. Even still I have moments of not being sure of my right to feel certain ways. While I’d had no idea, all my friends were telling me - not because they ever said anything - but the very groups I had aligned myself with was such a telling sign of what I was. And that’s one of those things that you just can’t isolate on a form. There is no box to check. So what is minority and how to we define it? How do we find it? How do we bring these people up in the world, give them a chance and convince them over and over again: you deserve this. You deserve to be here and you can do it. You may be a minority in this way but that just can’t be the thing that stops you. It just can’t. It’s all wrong. Imposters syndrome was something that interested me - there was a group of people that would know what it was and when they tell you it just shoots straight into your soul: you know my thoughts, my feelings, my fears that everyone can see me. I’ve had a couple of those encounters where I just felt my heart stop. There’s no way to fully explain that feeling - you feel like you are being pulled open. The idea that other people are wandering around me feeling this same way was incredibly validating and comforting. So what can we do at this point? Just ask people “are you a minority?” and see what they say, see how they identify themselves. I’m at a moment in my life where I have somehow squeezed myself into a space where I have a future, I have a careers, I have a wonderful group of friends and a great community but I am not entirely sure how I got here. I think of this as my second life. There were many times in my childhood where I thought that there just wouldn’t be anything after 25 - I couldn’t imagine living that long and I didn’t know would possibly get me there. I had zero confidence but yet with every project I worked on, everything I created I got shining endorsements. My teachers and bosses were shocked by something about how I worked, what I did. It was something that they nor I ever really understood but now I think it was a fight inside of me. A desperation that knew that I had to do it and I had to do it well. There were just no other options and I cared more than anyone else would. My dad tells me now that I have so much strength, passion and drive and how my childhood must have prepared me for that. And it’s probably true - I took those moments and experience and I hardened myself and I knew I had to always be fighting. At the same time I never thought it would be possible but I just knew I had to do it. I am the same way with my relationships. I’ve had so many friends that have told me that they’ve told me more things than anyone else in their lives, that I know them better than anyone else. When I went to camp over the summers in middle school I would be the person that would confront someone - “what are you doing? Are you okay? What is going on for you now?” I think it was because I wanted to take their pain, I wanted to feel something with them instead of feeling it alone. I wanted to have someone to share it with. And then at the end of high school my life took a turn and I just literally thought it was all over. I convinced myself that I would go home and ____ and that would be it. My mom took me home and made my sister watch me - I hadn’t said anything to her and there was no way she could have known but somehow she did. And so I got through the next day and then the next. And life went on. For a while it got a lot worse - I threw my body away, I drank every night and I was wishing it would all just end on it’s own. But it didn’t and at some point I was ready to try again. I can’t really isolate what that moment was but I was ready to not have my life any more - I wanted a different one and I couldn’t convince myself that I deserved it but I was going to abuse the system and get what I wanted. And that’s what I did. I said “I don’t care - I will take what I need” and I was able to get it. We have to remember that after all this, as a minority you need to grab things whether or not they are being given to you. At least that’s the only way I could figure it out. And now I am here, seemingly with everything figured out. And I don’t feel like that other girl any more. She’s just not me and I don’t live in her mind any more. At times I can remember what it felt like and it’s as if my brain is being squeezed into this dark and constricting space - I can’t see or breathe and everything is blurry. But at the end of the day, does any of that even matter? No one else knows my past here and they don’t know who I was so while I can focus on my past, it doesn’t define me. I know that it made me who I am and enabled me to be the person I am now but I don’t see that as the point. We’ll all have hardships - that’s guaranteed - but at the end of the day I need to know that I am here because of me.
Hello all ! I hope all is well! I know I haven’t been around as much (boo - bad Laurel) but here I am !
So here’s what’s going on:
- I started my summer internship and it is going swimmingly.
- I broke up with my partner of 3 years and I am exploring Tinder and it’s inherent weirdness, craziness and hilariousness.
- I am working on spending time alone. I realized I was incredibly dependent on just being around people - anyone really - so I would never spend time alone. It was at the kind of thing that while may not seem like a big deal I knew had to deal with not wanting to be alone with myself. So I am spending a lot of time in parks, reading books, getting coffee, biking around town, getting a drink at a pub alone (oh wow) and playing Jenga with myself.
Basically: life is good, complicated, interesting, embarrassing and hilarious.
Also I majorly crashed while on my bike and I have gruesome bruises every where and my foot clicks as I limp along #funTimes!
That’s basically me right now! I hope all of you are doing well - I know you are because you are all amazing people that can do anything and I believe in you.
Peace, love, happiness, wine, coffee, good pizza, sunny days and beautiful men <3
ALSO feel free to message me any time babes :D Still responding to messages (privately or publicly - whatever you want :))
Hello all ! I hope all is well! I know I haven’t been around as much (boo - bad Laurel) but here I am !
So here’s what’s going on:
- I started my summer internship and it is going swimmingly.
- I broke up with my partner of 3 years and I am exploring Tinder and it’s inherent weirdness, craziness and hilariousness.
- I am working on spending time alone. I realized I was incredibly dependent on just being around people - anyone really - so I would never spend time alone. It was at the kind of thing that while may not seem like a big deal I knew had to deal with not wanting to be alone with myself. So I am spending a lot of time in parks, reading books, getting coffee, biking around town, getting a drink at a pub alone (oh wow) and playing Jenga with myself.
Basically: life is good, complicated, interesting, embarrassing and hilarious.
Also I majorly crashed while on my bike and I have gruesome bruises every where and my foot clicks as I limp along #funTimes!
That’s basically me right now! I hope all of you are doing well - I know you are because you are all amazing people that can do anything and I believe in you.
Peace, love, happiness, wine, coffee, good pizza, sunny days and beautiful men <3
Hi Laurel. I love your blog! I wondered if you keep track of your body measurements? You look like you are a similar size to me. Only I am more pear shaped, no boobs but all hips and thighs! Keep up the good work. You look great. C: x
Hello! Thank you! It always feels so good to hear that 😄 So I loosely keep track of my measurements - I think it's one of the few accurate indicators of health progress but I haven't measured in probably 3 months. Like any health indicator, it's not good to obsess over but I like to have an idea of where I am at.I'm like 32, 28, 40 for bust, waist, hips and I've got 24 inch thigh circumference, 12 inch flexed biceps. I've got the massive thighs and caboose too 😊 (go pears! 🍐🍐🍐)
i couldn’t make this up even if i tried
Haha, that illustration is the best !
Hello, I'm thinking about doing 30 day shred or ripped in 30. I know you do ripped in 30. Did you think you saw decent results? Would you recommend it?
Hello! So I have done both and I would definitely say 30 Day Shred, while still challenging, was less challenging than Ripped in 30. Both are really good for firming up you abs, back muscles and buns. 30 Day Shred gave me more arm gains while Ripped in 30 is giving me more leg gains and slightly more abs than 30DS. I would suggest 30DS if you are newish or a beginner and I would suggest either if you are more of a seasoned athlete. The tricky thing is that both programs are great but I lot more people drop out of RI30 than 30DS so you want to pick one that suits your needs and abilities right now. But really I love both of them. I would recommend doing 30DS and then RI30 if you’re up for it :)
Do u have any tip on how to get rid off muffin tops? Love handles?
Hello! So I don’t really believe in spot reduction. It was a big thing in the ‘90s and some people still do programs for them but you just can’t control where your body loses fat from.
That said, you can build up muscle in that area to make it more firm or you can do a restricted diet to lose fat and wait for that area to reduce. I thought abs workouts were really great for making my stomach area feel more solid. Another silly thing - and I have to say this because I didn’t realize this in high school - but if you wear pants that are less restricting on your hips then they’ll fit better and the muffin top will not appear :3 I was so obsessed with telling myself that I was a size 8 (when at that time I was probably really a size 10 or 12...) that I wouldn’t wear pants that fit properly so I was always muffin-top-in’ everywhere.
Yeah but mainly there are no easy fixes. Good luck ! Tell me if there’s anything I can do to help :)
Love the blog! I've just had a good gander 👍🏻👍🏻
Thank you! That's so nice to hear, I'm glad you enjoy it :)
Me: *explaining to my lil bro what having a period feels like because he was curious*
Dad: Hey shut up literally no one wants to hear about that ew
Dad: Besides women are exaggerating the so called pain they go through anyway
Me:
Bro:
Bro: No wonder mom left you.
Me: OH MY GOD oH MY gOd OOOOOOOOOOOH
Harry Potter ~ Albus Dumbledore
Yup. I feel like I need a shirt with this on it :3
Day 27! Look at that sweaty glow ;D I'm ready for Monday now! Only 3 more days (weee!) Any suggestions for the next program? Considering P90X, Max 30, JM's Body Revolution, etc. Have an awesome week lovelies !
Who are you ? Personal Blogger Self Promo to 11k
Would you like a solo promo to 11,000 + Fitness blogs? Let’s get to know each other a little bit better. :)
1) Must be a personal blogger that shares the details of your journey on your blog. To me, this means daily text and or pictures that document your journey and shares your ups and downs.
2) Must be following me. (I check)
3) Reblog this.
4) Send me an ask (not fanmail) describing you and your blog.
5) I’ll share it with my 11,XXX followers!
Unlimited from 8:30 PM - 8:30 AM CST.
Bonus! I’ll check out and follow several of you. I’ll also pick one new blog and one blog I already follow for solo screen shot promo!
I should have mentioned, this will go out via queue over the next 24 hours or so. :) Keep an eye out and reblog them to help spread the word.
*Rebloggingggg*
