Last year I took my first trip to Ghana. What was supposed to be a 10-day trip of rest and relaxation turned into so much more. Instead of spending the last few days partying, I made the last minute decision to visit Kokrobite, a beach town just outside the capital city of Accra. Standing on

Courtesy Depending on how you look at it, a one-year-old is either the hardest or easiest person to gift on your shopping list. By 12 months they’ve started to appreciate things and are on the go, scooting or crawling and doing a whole lot of exploring. But a mastery of speech is still not in

Courtesy Picking a gift for someone who really, really loves their dog is simple: Find something that celebrates said canine in some way, shape, or form. Whether it’s jewelry they can wear on the daily or customized art, you can’t go wrong if it reenforces the idea that, yes, their dog is nonparallel and the

George Floyd was murdered on May 25. The video of his killing by police, taken by courageous 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, sparked demands for justice far beyond the streets of Minneapolis. By May 30, Americans were protesting police brutality and systemic injustice in every state in the union. Unfortunately, there has been a steady stream of

First I made borscht. I yanked the skin off chicken drumsticks. I hovered over the pot like an anxious parent at the playground, spooning off froth. I sliced cabbage into ribbons and grated beets until my fingertips were magenta and raw. Consulting notes scrawled on Post-Its, I tried to divine what my mother meant when

About two months ago, my dad began to experience a series of strange neurological symptoms. He regularly felt pain radiate up and down his right arm, and occasionally into his neck and jaw. Sometimes his fingers on his right hand would tingle or go numb. The nerve pain was so uncomfortable that he had to

On my sixteenth birthday, my father gave me a ring. It was Black Hills Gold. A yellow band with a heart made of flimsy pink and green gold leaves. This was my purity ring, the ring given to me to represent a pledge to safeguard my virginity. It was my commitment to abstinence and to

Two years ago, while I was in Vermont for a yoga teacher training, I had my first threesome with a married, cis-het, white couple. I found them on Tinder, as you do. My profile was simple. Me backstage in a tube top dress with a smirky smile. A swimsuit selfie in my friend’s pool. A

The first time I cried during the pandemic, I was sitting on my future in-laws’ white couch in their Manhattan apartment. My fiancé and I were watching the movie about the guy who realizes the Beatles never happened, so he pretends to be the one who wrote their songs. It’s a great concept but a

As the COVID-19 crisis continues and health care practitioners attempt to divert non-essential traffic to local hospitals and clinics, U.S. residents are finding themselves up against increased hardship when it comes to accessing medical care; and women are learning just how detrimental this can be to their health and wellbeing. Christie, a mother of two,

I was born in Indiana, in a village so remote our closest neighbors grew popcorn. After my birth, in a snowstorm that closed interstates, my father rented a monster truck and drove across the fields to retrieve my mother and me from the hospital. I grew up one state over, in Ohio. Our town was

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m not even playing the lottery,” my father Jerry P. Jackson said to my startled ears. It was the beginning of social isolation in March and he was taking every precaution against Covid-19. He had stocked up on food and wasn’t leaving his house in the Lithonia suburbs of Atlanta. I

In January, Jennifer Carroll Foy helped end nearly 50 years of inaction on the Equal Rights Amendment by leading a push to make Virginia the final state needed to ratify the landmark women’s rights legislation to the Constitution. Today, the 38 year old freshman state delegate and criminal defense attorney took on an entirely new,

When social distancing guidelines were first introduced in the Pacific Northwest, Phoebe’s family thought she would be fine. “I’m super introverted,” she said, “I am perfectly happy at home with my cat and a book.” But the 25 year old, who, like others interviewed, requested her last name not be used in order to protect

This story was produced in partnership with The Fuller Project. Terri first realized she was pregnant in late March. She was isolating at home with her boyfriend in rural upstate New York, where she runs a housecleaning business. At 46, she was sure she didn’t want to become a 60-year-old parent to a teenager. “I

The best relationships are easy. That’s been my advice to close friends who have come to me in the midst of fights with their significant others. It always infuriates them. Yes, relationships take time and energy and selflessness, etc. but at the end of the day, I always insist, there should be ease. Now, on

This Mother’s Day will look a lot different from what we’ve come to expect. For most people, there won’t be large gatherings of family or casual hugs exchanged. Right now, it seems, keeping each other safe is the best way to celebrate. It’s an understatement to say the pandemic has reshaped how we view every

“The biggest day on the internet ever,” at least according to Jumperoo62, a commenter on the British gossip forum Tattle.life, took place last November. The rabbit hole of a site where 53,000-plus members dissect the lives of influencers with the meticulous, if selective, attention of Renaissance cartographers was consistently critical and often cruel. The Tattle

For Melissa, a 29 year old resident of Tampa, happy hours look much different now: They’re more frequent, start earlier, and she’s often alone. While she rarely drank at home without company before the coronavirus pandemic, now she reasons that “desperate times call for desperate measures.” And in that sense, Melissa is far from alone.

They weren’t even going to take the cruise—they were too busy. But at the last minute, Katherine Codekas and her husband Matthew Smith decided since they had already bought the tickets, they’d make the time. So on January 13, they flew to Tokyo and boarded the Diamond Princess, a two-week cruise that embarked from Yokohama,

From the virus that brought you tie-dye sweatsuits, #WFH posts, and a stimulus check that barely covers the cost of existing, a new quarantine phenomenon has emerged from the shadows of the room you haven’t left all day: Zoom dating. The newest form of virtual romance essentially combines two of my least favorite things: first

Decades before Fleabag snogged a priest, before a Snuggie-wrapped Liz Lemon dined on night cheese, and before Lena Dunham sat naked in a bathtub eating a cupcake on Girls, Aline Kominsky-Crumb was bringing the messy interior lives of women to life in her comics. As an underground comics artist in the 1970s, Kominsky-Crumb pioneered a

The month of Ramadan is a time for social connection and celebration. It’s a time for religious reflection and volunteering, a time when we fast from food and water, as well as vices like anger, from sunup to sundown. I’ve celebrated in places as different as California, Jordan, and Washington DC. But no matter where

I’m a 26-year-old nurse from Indianapolis, Indiana. I’m married with two kids and have two more on the way. My youngest is 11 months old, and my oldest is 3. My twins (a boy and a girl) are due on June 10. Up until last month, I had my pregnancy plan in place. I’d continue

I fell in love with my roommate. We got engaged in the house and, funnily enough, we got married in the house as well. The wedding day brought the typical long-term coordination and planning that goes into an event of this scale, and all our family and friends temporarily moved into our neighborhood for the

We did it. We have officially reached who-the-hell-knows week of quarantine. Our roots have grown out, our makeup has been abandoned, and real pants are a distant memory. Probably the only quarantine glow-up to exist has happened to Zoom. The once-irrelevant video call service has become all the rage for working professionals, educators, and families

With the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s easy to feel like everything has screeched to a halt. We can’t gather with our friends or make dinner reservations, schedule trips or even safely walk down a crowded street. But not everybody has been putting their plans on hold while waiting for daily life to return to “normal.” Instead,

If you ask newlyweds Abena and Ade to pick a song to represent their journey so far, they’ll say “The Matrimony” by Wale and Usher without hesitation. It’s the Jerry Seinfeld monologue that opens the song that resonates with the couple the most: “Getting engaged is the first hill of the roller coaster,” the veteran