This has also been published with my friends at The Good Men Project.

When I was young, reading was one of those terrible chores like cleaning your room and dusting. What was the point? It was something someone else dictated we do, and was terribly unpleasant.

I started Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle on a Thursday night. Less than two days later, on Saturday morning, I finished it and started Forward, which Abby Wambach autographed in November 2016 at the Texas Women’s Conference. The line for her table was exponentially longer than anyone else’s there. Progress often is represented by long lines for an attractive highly accomplished Olympian, that happens to be an outspoken and proud androgynous lesbian.

For myself, and many, Love Warrior is full of ah-ha moments, and yes, yes yes! Me too, me toos. 

I related to Forward on a far deeper level, and as a book it is quite different from, but also very similar to Love Warrior. One of the most relatable lines to me, on page 42:

“Years later, when I am wholly comfortable in my skin, I will be judged in similar ways - questioning looks when I walk into bathrooms or through airport security, looks that require me to cinch my voice an octave higher to say “Hi,” and, if that fails, to declare, bluntly, “I am a girl.” It will happen so often, for so long, that it will become a joke to me and my teammates, yet a part of me will always find it hurtful, and want people to pay better attention, to take the time to look. To see me.”

I have a running inside joke, about the same sense of surprise of women in the loo when they see me doing something wild, like washing my hands. I’m aware of what I look like, and it’s gotten better since I’ve gained a bit of weight and my figure has accentuated its curves, though my haircut and general aesthetic occasionally gets a “oh my god! I’m in the wrong restroom!” and an awkward re-entrance which I try to greet with a smile and a “have a nice day!” in a higher and more feminine tone than usual.

We all gotta tinkle y’all. And reading is an exhilarating adventure.