I’ve been creating and doing these weird life experiments with myself for decades and this one is the most powerful so far. I’m re-upping for another week and am inviting you to join me. It was way different than what I expected. This is not at all about being perky or fake, just letting those automatic judgments pass on through instead of knitting them into a sweater to wear – or if you are a geek like me, it means giving them a neutral value instead of a negative one. The BIG difference is the almost complete lack of the word “should” in my vocabulary or my head. Before trying the Whine-Free Week, I had much resistance to certain kinds of action. I see now that enormous amounts of my energy were going into coaxing, cajoling, badgering and scaring myself into doing what I “should” do. No wonder I was both weary and rebellious.

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual. ~Gloria Steinem
If love is a four-letter word, feminism is rooted in hell – just check in with an unfortunately large number of this society, any society, really. But how do they relate? Love and sex, sex and womanhood, womanhood and love. Or, step back. Love is sex, sex is womanhood, and womanhood is love. So why am I struggling so to codify my feminist belief system with my desire to be found sexy? It’s messy, messy, ugly when, on paper, it sure shouldn’t be. As a feminist, I should feel complete and utter power in my sexuality. Isn’t that part of what we’ve been fighting for? But sometimes it feels limited, as in “I’m not supposed to feel my sexuality in any way that is based on patriarchal ideals, or a male perception of what is considered beautiful vs. not, or anything that can later be used against me.”

For thousands of centuries, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been treating illness and misalignments using many of the common everyday spices found in most common kitchens. This healing art uses different modalities to treat the body, such as acupuncture, acupressure, and herbs. Some medicinal uses of common spices include using cinnamon as a blood circulation stimulater, cloves to increase sexual potency, turmeric to help dissolve tumors, and ginger to calm indigestion. Within the last decade, acupuncture has become a booming business. With 3.1 million adults and 150,000 children choosing acupuncture as a form of treatment for illness or prevention, it has become more acceptable in medical practices.