An important read for my fellow ladies.

Seriously. Read it.

You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!

Sound familiar?

If you’re a woman, it probably does.

Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?

When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling — that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation, pure and simple.

And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.

I think it’s time to separate inconsiderate behavior from emotional manipulation, and we need to use a word not found in our normal vocabulary.

I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a term often used by mental health professionals (I am not one) to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.

read Yashar Ali’s full storry at HuffPo

- Jen

A small sample from this BuzzFeed article:

Clubbing in your early twenties:
Clubbing in your late twenties:

Confidence, early twenties:
Confidence, late twenties:

Excitement in your early twenties:

Excitement in your late twenties:

Early twenties:

Late twenties:

What about life in your nearly mid-20s?!!

- Jen

5 months and counting without a phone in London. Annoys the crap out of my friends, but I actually really like the disconnected feeling. It forces people to make solid plans. Don’t get me wrong…it definitely has its down points, esp. when plans go array. Unfortunately, it can’t last much longer. The ‘real world’ will eventually figure out my scheme and force me to fold. Blugh.

— Jen

Some quick hits from this list at successify.net:

1. Don’t hold grudges.
3. See problems as challenges.
4. Express gratitude for what they already have.
9. Get absorbed into the present.
18. Exercise.
22. Accept what cannot be changed.

-Jen

from Esquire: Is Greenville the Next Big Food City of the South?
by John Mariani

With big cities like Atlanta, still lacking in Southern soul, and Nashville, finally capitalizing on its musical history, battling it out to be the South’s best food city, a smaller, more interesting competition is going on between two smaller South Carolina cities — Charleston and Greenville. Despite the former’s gastro-surge and national media hype over the last three years, the latter is quickly gaining on the top spot. …

What is really amazing is that within a mile-and-a-half stretch of Main Street, there are now more than 110 restaurants, overwhelmingly locally owned, and excellent. There’s a brand-new French bakery, Le Grand Bakery, turning out fine baguettes and croissants. There’s Vietnamese at Pho Noodleville, Jamaican at Island Blend Jerk & Grill, and a slew of sushi restaurants.  Among the best of these is Red Fin, whose crew is turning out some of the best Nobu-style sushi I’ve tasted in the South. The place is owned by Matt Wuhrman, who after jumping out of airplanes with the 82nd Airborne and 25 months of duty in Iraq, came back to the U.S. in 2010. He worked in bars and nightclubs before moving to and falling in love with Greenville, and, with an investment partner, opened Red Fin, which has a night scene downstairs and family dining upstairs.

Read more at Esquire.com.

And to think, I spent decades here dreaming of leaving.

-Jen