My Life on the Road

You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules

I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least.

"You're always the person you were when you were born," she says impatiently. "You just keep finding new ways to express it.