I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it together while the world loses its collective mind.

I see you. And here’s what I know about you, even though we’ve probably never met:

You don’t fit neatly into a box. You’re not a tradwife and you’re not a girlboss. You’re not a Karen and you’re not a pick-me. You’re not Madonna and you’re not a whore, in fact, you might even be a reformed slut living your dream life in the suburbs (heyo). Many of you have kids and aging parents. Maybe you’re the breadwinner but don’t believe that makes your husband a “cuck” as nihilistic podcasters who don’t know shit about shit would have you believe. Maybe you’re divorced or a single parent. You’re balancing work life and home life imperfectly while you drive your kids to activities and your parents to doctors’ appointments. At the end of the day, you just want to escape into a true crime podcast or something mindless or a good book on tape while you have a glass of wine or an herbal tea and fold the laundry.

There are millions and millions of us. We’re at the soccer games and the PTA meetings and the office and the grocery store and the school board meetings we never thought we’d attend because not long ago we were dancing on bars. We’re the women who still read books and have real friendships and know how to talk about politics and sports and give great recommendations for podcasts and skin products and restaurants. We’re the moms who let our kids play outside and the wives who actually adore their husbands and the professionals who earned their positions and don’t need to be on a panel about it.

And a criminal number of you are single women, too. You’re my heroes because you’re the ones navigating this alone, without a husband to vent to at the end of the day or kids to distract you from the relentless insanity. You’re out here building a life on your own terms in a culture that either pities you or tells you you’re a girlboss who doesn’t need anyone, and neither of those is true.

You just haven’t sold your soul for a ring or a roommate. You’re holding the line with no backup, and honestly that might be the loneliest version of sane there is. So, I see you too. Especially you.

You might’ve voted for Obama and then Trump and then felt weird about both. Or maybe you didn’t vote at all because the choices felt like picking between food poisoning and a house fire. Maybe you used to call yourself a feminist until feminism stopped meaning “women are capable adults” and started meaning something you didn’t recognize.

You believe in science, but you also believe that a woman is an adult human female, and you’re tired of those two things being treated as contradictory. You think men and women are different—not better or worse, just different—and that acknowledging this isn’t evidence of your “internalized misogyny.” Maybe you have kids, maybe you don’t. Either way, you think kids should be allowed to be kids. You think comedy should be funny. You think people should be judged by their character and not sorted into an endless spreadsheet of identities and oppressions.

These are not radical positions. These are the positions of a sane person. But sanity can feel lonely right now. You just need to know that you’re not alone. I promise you, you’re not, and my inbox is evidence of that. So is my real life, which is filled with women too busy for the bullshit.

I see you biting your tongue at the dinner party when someone says something so disconnected from reality that you briefly wonder if you’re the one who’s lost it. You haven’t. But I know it doesn’t always feel that way when you’re the only one in the room not nodding along.

I see you at the school event, smiling politely while moms discuss why so-and-so is a fascist and anyone who likes him is a Nazi and they assume that everyone around them feels the same way.

I see you at work, sitting through the training, clicking through the slides, knowing that if you said out loud what you’re thinking quietly, your career would be over by lunch. So you don’t say it. You go home and you scream into the void of a group chat with the four other women you trust, and even there, you half-wonder if someone will screenshot it.

I see you doom-scrolling at midnight, reading the news and thinking: “Am I crazy, or is everyone else?”

You’re not crazy. You’re a busy normie woman trying to take care of your life, your kids or parents or both, give your marriage the attention it deserves, and get workout in.

You might be sleep-deprived and running on coffee and cortisol and the fumes of whatever willpower you have left, but you are not crazy. You’re reasonable in an unreasonable world.

That’s the thing nobody talks about—the loneliness of being a reasonable normie in a world of radicalized lunatics. I started Dumpster Fire almost seven years ago because I couldn’t stop noticing how insane everything had gotten and I needed somewhere to say it out loud, but mostly because I was lonely. I was living in Los Angeles and I truly felt like I was going insane as all the women around me were knitting pink pussy hats and preparing for their war on masculinity.

I didn’t set out to build a community, I set out to not lose my mind. All I needed was somewhere to vent. It turns out a lot of you were needing the same thing! And here’s what I’ve realized after almost 300 episodes of pointing at the absurdity: It’s normie women (and men of course—but this piece is for the ladies) who are the backbone of society.

You’re the ones emailing me at 2 a.m., saying, “I thought I was the only one.” You’re the ones keeping your families sane, keeping your friendships in tact, keeping your workplaces functional, keeping your homes and yards beautiful, keeping your communities together—all while being told that everything you believe is wrong and everything you see with your own eyes isn’t real.

You’re doing this with no recognition and no permission and no cultural support. There is no magazine for you. There is no TV show that represents you. This doesn’t make you a victim, it just is what it is right now. There is no Roseanne so instead my husband and I just laugh at short-form videos that best represent the insanity of being a parent, sexist memes about being married, and pro-America AI slop.

The algorithms don’t know what to do with you because you don’t fit in a demographic bucket. You’re not angry or chaste enough for right-wing media and you’re not obedient or queer enough for left-wing media and you’re too smart for whatever the hell is happening on The View.

You’re the woman who can hold two thoughts in her head at the same time: That the world is a dumpster fire AND that life is still beautiful and funny and worth showing up for. And you keep showing up. Day after day after day.

Being able to hold that contradiction is maturity and I understand at times, this can feel like exile. But every sane woman I know eventually arrives at the same place: zero fucks. You’re free. And you’re powerful. You don’t need representation from a culture that’s lost the plot. You don’t need a movement. You don’t need a hashtag. You don’t need to be validated by people who can’t define the word “woman.” You just need to know you’re not alone.

So here’s my promise to you: I’m going to keep showing up, too. In my own little ways. It’s not much and I wish I could do more but I’ll keep writing stuff like this. I’ll keep talking to interesting, often unknown people on my podcast Walk-Ins Welcome. Twice a week on Dumpster Fire, even though I suck at makeup and I’m a writer who hates being on camera, I’ll continue making fun of the things that deserve to be made fun of, and reminding you (and myself) that life is absurd and that’s actually kind of the point and that men are pretty awesome and so are you. I’m going to keep making burgers out of sacred cows because levity will get us through this.

And when it gets heavy—and it does get heavy, trust me, I’ve wanted to quit this thing more times than I can count—I’m going to remember that there’s a woman out there reading this who needed to hear that she’s not crazy. That her instincts are right. That millions of sane women are out there, even when it feels like they’re not. They’re just busy.

We’re out there. We’re holding it down. Normies will save America. We just have to be reminded we’re not alone. I promise you—you’re not!

I love you ladies.

WOMEN!!!!!!

———————

If this letter found you, send it to one woman who needs it.

You know who she is.

“Why do I feel like I got hit by a bus?” I ask my husband first thing upon opening my eyes.

“Because we have a two-year-old — and we’re eighty,” he says.

“I was told kids keep you young,” I say to no one. My husband is already gone, making coffee.

We aren’t eighty, but there are days that it feels like it. In 2022, for the first time ever, the median age of a first-time mother in the United States hit the ripe old age of thirty. I was forty-three when I had my daughter and, let me tell you, there is a reason we are biologically wired to have kids in our youth. Having kids is a young person’s game.

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You’re made aware of this the minute you get pregnant if you’re over the age of thirty-five. Those in healthcare used to refer to these pregnancies as “geriatric” but that fell out of fashion for obvious reasons. Geriatric makes it sound like my ovaries are in Florida, riding golf carts in a MAGA parade. Geriatric evokes blue hair and nursing homes where my ovaries take a long drag off a Winston and yell, “BINGO!”

Even if you want to think of yourself as Hera herself, the doctors and nurses will remind you constantly of your “advanced maternal age” — but you know who reminded me the most often? My ancient body. “Geriatric” is offensive yet factually accurate at the same time. There is a higher chance of chromosomal abnormalities as you age and it goes up exponentially every year. Higher chances of stillbirth, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. More likely to have high blood pressure, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. If anyone is sexist, it’s Mother Nature.

Read the rest of the article in The Spectator.

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My daughter around a month old when she started crying. It was a Sunday and I managed to escape to the farmer’s market—one of my first solo trips outside my post-baby bubble. My husband texted me and said she had been inconsolable for about a half hour. This was something new, but I chalked it up to her just missing mama. That night she cried for hours and none of the usual tricks could calm her down. Up until this moment, she had been a pretty chill baby. What happened?

Suddenly she’d been replaced by a red-faced screaming banshee. Fists clenched. Stiff spine. No position, no amount of bouncing or walking or rocking or strolling seemed to help. We were terrified of her. My husband and I had to take shifts as we could only take the crying for so long. Exiting the nursery defeated and demoralized, we would look at one another in passing. Did we break her?

In my off shifts that night, I was furiously searching “my baby won’t stop crying” to determine if I’d done something wrong. As a new mother, I assumed it was something I was or wasn’t doing and even worse, I feared that she was in physical distress. We are new parents and just kept running down the crying baby checklist. Is she hungry? Is she tired? Is she hot? Is she cold? Does she have a dirty diaper? Does she need to be burped? I figured she had bad gas and this episode was a one-off. But a word kept popping up during my search: colic. The word has an ominous, mythical quality.

Colic is defined as “predictable periods of significant distress in an otherwise well-fed, healthy baby.” It certainly described what was happening but one day of inconsolable crying does not a colicky baby make. I was familiar with colic from siblings and friends who had to deal with it. I remember the stress it put on their marriages. The tension in the whole household. The long nights. The lack of sleep for months. Their near-unraveling.

The gold standard for determining if your baby has colic is the “Rule of Threes”: Does your baby cry more than three hours a day, more than three days a week, for more than three weeks? Your baby probably has colic.

More than three weeks? I shuddered to think of one more night of this let alone more than three weeks of it. No, it couldn’t be colic. I refused to believe it.

Someone gifted us the Talli baby, a way to keep track of poops and pees and feedings in those early days when you’re out of your mind and the world is a blur and then you go in to see your pediatrician and they’re asking how many times they’re doing all of these things. Lady, do I look like I can do math? I’m barely holding on. I digress. In this baby tracker is a milestones section where you can keep a journal. So on that first night, after hours of banshee wailing and finally getting her down, I started keeping track of her episodes.

5/29/22 8:57am Journal entry: Left Jeren to go to the Farmers Market and she was inconsolable for about a half hour while I was gone. Was fussy and inconsolable at night. Gas? Witching hour? What is this? Seems new from her. Usually she’s just a very easy mellow baby. Note: Colic???

WEEK ONE: Denial is more than just a river of baby tears.

When I would ask my friends with kids if my daughter had colic, they would often reply, “Oh that’s just witching hour—all kids have it.” This is not true. All kids do not cry inconsolably for several hours every night. “Witching hour” is a cute nickname for the hard evenings when everyone is tired and over-stimulated. Colic is a fucking nightmare.

After about a week of this with maybe one night off, I was convinced she had it. My husband was still dubious, but I had receipts. I showed him my journal I’d been keeping. We started dreading the night as it loomed in front of us. This was how my sister diagnosed it as colic. “That dread,” she shivered. “I remember it so well. That’s how you know it’s colic.”

I threw myself into researching what colic was and how to solve it, because in 2022 we must know what colic is and how to cure it, right? Wrong. There are a lot of theories about what causes colic from the scientific-seeming to the outright woo. Doctors don’t know what causes it. They think it could be an undeveloped digestive system. It could be allergies (and sometimes it is). They have no idea why it appears around week four. Or why it just seems to magically resolve on its own, in its own time. They don’t know why it starts at the same time every night and why each baby seems to have their own colic hours.

I read articles about how it’s due to overfeeding. Other articles insist it’s underfeeding. Or not burping enough. A doula told me it’s the baby realizing that she’s not in the womb anymore and that she’s not going back—baby’s first existential crisis. The doula insisted she was grieving that loss. One woman told me I wasn’t wearing her enough and that’s why they don’t have this problem in the developing world. Someone suggested that maybe she was crying because she was picking up on my grief over the tragic death of my obgyn—which puts an awful lot of pressure on me to not have any emotions five weeks postpartum. Although spookily, she did start crying the exact day and time that he died. So who fricking knows!

Not me. Not doctors. Not anyone.

WEEK TWO: My daughter the PSYOPS weapon.

Somewhere along the way, I came across an article in the New Yorker about tactics the military was using to train people to withstand interrogation. Not surprisingly, “of the most stress-inducing tapes is a recording of babies crying inconsolably.”

Between the sleep deprivation and the isolation in combination with the non-stop wailing, I realized that my daughter is a military grade psyop weapon. It made sense. Colic is a hazing into parenthood. It’s a bucket of ice cold water thrown on that dreamy newborn bubble.

It’s a hardcore initiation that teaches you exactly what parenting is versus what you think it is.

Gone were my pregnant fantasies of bathing the baby, giving her a nice gentle massage with lavender oil, reading her a book and rocking her to sleep, gently. Instead it was the colic Olympics. Holding her in physically demanding positions, arms outstretched at a 45-degree angle, while bouncing on a yoga ball until my legs and arms and back burned. SHUSHING her as loud as humanly possible. My face red. Her face red from screaming. I’d go as long as I could and then I’d tap out and my husband would come in for his shift.

“I thought we had a chill baby!” My husband would say when he’d collapse on the couch when we finally got her down five or six hours after we started the bedtime routine.

“She’s clearly not chill!” I would say.

At first we tried to soothe her together like classic first child parents. But the crying would up the tension in the room and we realized pretty quickly that it was best if we dealt with her individually. It’s like the screaming supercharged the atoms in the house and everyone, including the dog, was on edge.

My husband quickly adopted the mantra, “It’s not my job to stop her from crying, it’s my job to be here for her while she’s crying.” I was not that Zen about things. My denial took on a different form. I couldn’t believe that there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. I felt powerless and useless and like a failure. I’m the Mom. There has to be something I can do to soothe her. But not even the boob calmed her down. C-section scar burning, I would physically exhaust myself trying to calm her.

“There is no soothing this child,” my husband the therapist would say. “You just have to hold space for her.” He was right. I wanted to fix her. I started holding her and singing. Bouncing and shushing and singing.

The days blurred into weeks. If my aunt hadn’t dropped off pre-made meals, I’m not sure I would have even eaten. We were zombies. There is something traumatic about colic. Most parents who have been through it, have a visceral reaction when you even mention the word. You can’t know until you know.

WEEK THREE - SIX: Desperation and surrender

I reached out to my subscriber community and Twitter for suggestions for dealing with a colicky baby and one woman wrote:

“I just read this to my husband and he shuddered.”

Below is a list of things that were suggested by well-meaning relatives, strangers and Google. The internet will suggest you stop breastfeeding because she can’t process lactose. The internet and Facebook friends will also tell you that formula is literal poison. Don’t listen to the internet. Unless you find out from your pediatrician that your child can’t process lactose or has some kind of allergy, don’t stop breastfeeding them.

Here’s a list in no particular order—and if it was something we tried, how it worked for us. Colic is like whack-a-mole. What works one day might not work the next:

• Tight swaddling: Our kid was born with her fists up and hated being swaddled with her arms down. The only swaddle she liked was the Love to Dream swaddle and I highly recommend them if your baby hates being swaddled traditionally.

• Warm bath: My infant hated baths and she would lose her mind afterwards, they were much more successful during the day. Lots of people swear by baths for helping calm them though.

• Put them on the dryer: We heard this one over and over. People would put their kid in their car seat on the running dryer. It’s pretty dangerous to let your kid sleep unattended in their car seat so I don’t recommend it and besides we have have a stackable washer anyways.

• Drive her around: In this economy?

• Go for a walk: We started taking evening walks, which she loved and although it didn’t stop her from crying it lessened the number of hours.

• Amber bead necklace: Some people swear by this but it was a bit too woo for me.

• Change environments: Tried this and she screamed in all of them.

• Run the vacuum: Didn’t work for us but other people had a lot of success.

• Skin to skin: She was too hot from screaming to really do skin to skin until she wore herself out and calmed down.

• Mylicon drops or gripe water: Our pediatrician suggested Mylicon drops and I have no idea if they helped or not, but we tried them any way.

• Probiotics: Also tried these and again—I have no idea if they helped or not. This is part of the crazy making of colic, other than immediate soothing techniques that calm them down, you can’t really be sure if any of the other stuff is working.

• Chiropractor: I didn’t try this. I thought about it and maybe I should have, but they’re so expensive and I’m still on the fence as to how I feel about chiropractors in general let alone chiropractors for babies but some of my best friends get all their kids adjusted.

• Swing her in the car seat: Our kid hated any and all swings.

• White noise: We are a white noise house now. I’m not sure it helps her but it helps to drown out the screams.

• The “colic hold”: This maybe worked once. Whack-a-mole. It never worked again.

  

• Manzanilla tea: Never tried this. Maybe I should have!

• Fennell tea: Drank Fennell tea every night. Have no idea if it helped. But she was still crying like a banshee so probably not.

• Rocking chair: She only liked being rocked once she calmed down.

• Rub their back: Hard to rub the back of a kicking screaming child.

• Baby foot massage: I did this during the day to help with her digestion. No idea if it worked.

• Bicycle kicks: When she had gas the bicycle kicks definitely helped but I’m not convinced her crying was due to gas.

• Music: She didn’t respond to music but I love the randomness of what worked for other people.

  • “My son had terrible colic, and the only thing that helped was to put on ‘Lady of Shalott’ by Loreena McKennitt. I would hold him on my chest and sing along. He would cry through the first verse or two and then gradually stop and listen. And by the end he would be asleep.”

  • “My brother would quiet down to Andy William Moon River. My nephew would quiet down if we played mariachi music.”

• Bounce on a yoga ball and SHUSH until you’re blue in the face: This was the only thing that worked for us.

• Change your diet: More on this one below.

Like a good addict in recovery, when I’m desperate, I look for something I can quit. In this case, it was food. One of the suggestions (that is not scientifically proven) is to cut out allergens. Dairy, gluten, sugar, eggs, tree nuts, etc…So that’s what I did to the best of my ability. I cut out dairy, gluten, processed sugar and eggs. Am I insane? Yes. I basically only ate lean meats, clean carbs and fruits and vegetables.

Did it work? Unfortunately, I’ll never know. She did start to get better after I changed my diet and began sleeping through the night. I’m not sure if the diet helped or if it was just her growing out of that phase. At any rate, it helped me. Cutting out all that stuff, as hard as it was, made me feel better and I think it helped balance my hormones during that huge postpartum shift. But as for the colic—it just receded, like a fog, after about six weeks. From what I’ve heard from other colic survivors, it can go on for months, so I consider myself lucky. One day I noticed I wasn’t dreading the nights anymore and that’s when I knew we were on the other side.

I don’t have any great advice. All the people who told me that you just had to ride it out, were right. It’s not comforting in the moment—but it’s the cold, hard truth. It’s normal to feel immensely frustrated but if you have the urge to shake or throw the baby, it’s completely acceptable to put them down in their bassinet or a safe place and walk away. Have your partner tap in if you can. If no one else is available to help you, take some deep breaths. Reset. Colic is something you have to survive—and you will survive it. It does end. It might be six weeks, three months, or six months (shudder) but it will pass.

The only real advice I can give you: Always pee before you tap in.

Upon opening Louise Perry’s new book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, I’m moved to tears by the dedication:

“For the women who learned it the hard way”

Unlike many other people who have read and reviewed Perry’s work, reading her book wouldn’t be some academic exercise in contemplating how liberal feminism has let women down. It wouldn’t be evaluating what those poor sluts over there have endured in the wake of the sexual revolution. Reading her book was personal.

I’m one of those sluts.

I’m a case study for her thesis. A cautionary tale. I knew this book was going to be difficult. And it made me realize it’s time to finish this essay –– one I’ve been trying to write for four years.

It’s a tough needle to thread. I’m grateful for the ability to control my reproductive cycle and make my own money. But that freedom has come at a price. The dark side of the sexual revolution is that even though it liberated women—unyoking sex from consequences has primarily benefited men.

I was first inspired to write this piece when a 19-year-old woman I used to wait tables with asked me: “Bridget, have you ever regretted having sex with a man?”

I laughed. “Yeah. All of them.”

That’s not entirely true. There was my first love in high school. And my first husband. But if I’m honest with myself, of the dozens of men I’ve been with (at least the ones I remember), I can only think of a handful I don’t regret. The rest I would put in the category of “casual,” which I would define as sex that is either meaningless or mediocre (or both). If I get really honest with myself, I’d say most of these usually drunken encounters left me feeling empty and demoralized. And worthless.

I wouldn’t have said that at the time, though. At the time, I would have told you I was “liberated” even while I tried to drink away the sick feeling of rejection when my most recent hook-up didn’t call me back. At the time, I would have said one-night stands made me feel “emboldened.” But in reality, I was using sex like a drug; trying unsuccessfully to fill a hole inside me with men. (Pun intended.)

I know regretting most of my sexual encounters is not something a sex-positive feminist who used to write a column for Playboy is supposed to admit. And for years, I didn’t. Let me be clear, being a “slut” and sleeping with a lot of men is not the only behavior I regret. Even more damaging was what I told myself in order to justify the fact that I was disposable to these men: I told myself I didn’t care.

I didn’t care when a man ghosted me. I didn’t care when he left in the middle of the night or hinted that he wanted me to leave. The walks of shame. The blackouts. The anxiety.

The lie I told myself for decades was: I’m not in pain—I’m empowered.

Looking back, it isn’t a surprise that I lied to myself. Because from a young age, sex was something I was lied to about.

Long before I ever had sex, I felt ashamed of my natural sexual urges and awkward in my blossoming female body. Growing up Catholic, all I remember about sex was feeling bad about it before I even knew what “it” was. I only knew that sex before marriage was wrong. Even the thought of a sexual act or masturbation filled me with debilitating guilt. The first time I kissed a boy, I was convinced I’d be punished. Struck down by an angry, misogynistic God.

As I got older, I was told to guard my virginity. Well-meaning mothers and aunts were clear that I needed to withhold sex in order to get a man to love and respect me. Sex was a commodity, a priceless gem I had to hang on to that increased in value the longer I held it. It made me feel like property. And although I don’t think that was the intention of the wise women who had learned their own lessons the hard way, for me, sex became inextricably linked to my self-worth.

The shame and guilt I grew up with regarding sex felt oppressive. I resented the double standard that men could be promiscuous and it would raise their status and a woman would be slut-shamed for similar behavior. My burgeoning sexuality would unfold as a reaction to these repressive religious orthodoxies, old school notions of sexual status, and trauma.

I lost my virginity at 17 to my boss at a restaurant where I worked. And a year later, I experienced my first sexual trauma. I felt damaged and dirty and I blamed myself. Everyone responds differently to these situations—I dealt with the overwhelming shame by becoming hyper-sexual and promiscuous.

The Culture was right there to pick me up and dust me off. I doubled down on being a proud slut and internalized the biggest and most damaging lie: that loveless sex is empowering. I basked in the girl-power glow of that delusion for decades, weaponizing my sexuality while convincing myself I was full of the divine feminine.

I was full of shit.

I told myself that because I could seduce a man, I was powerful. But as Perry says in her book, “...women can all too easily fail to recognize that being desired is not the same thing as being held in high esteem.” Deep down inside, I knew that to be the case. But as a defense mechanism, I crafted a man-eater persona. My mantras were rigid.

• You can either have a career or a relationship—but you can’t have both.

• Intimacy is creepy.

• Motherhood and children are a trap.

• Sex is only about power.

Another set of lies built on lies built on trauma. Sex isn’t just about power—it’s also about intimacy and vulnerability and trust. Things I wanted nothing to do with. Because implicit in modern dating is a complete lack of expectations –– especially those of chivalry.

Whenever a man wanted to pick up the tab or pull out the chair or open the door or pick me up or take me to dinner or see me during the day or wait longer than the first date to have sex, I was shocked and suspicious of them. Was he a serial killer?

Casual sex is fraught with insecurity and miscommunication; intimacy and love are punch lines. When a man I slept with had the courtesy to reach out, I mistook relief for happiness, rewiring my brain to be grateful for the bare minimum. The saddest realization is how low I set the bar.

A lifetime of allowing myself to be the other woman, taken for granted or treated like a doormat under the false pretense of being “empowered” came to a head one night with the arrival of a text message from an on-again, off-again lover.

“Goodnight baby I love you,” it said. Quickly followed by, “Wrong person.”

Rock bottom doesn’t always look like losing everything or ending up in jail. Sometimes it can be that sick feeling in your gut when you know, emotionally, you’re done. I wanted to be able to have meaningless sex like a guy, but it didn’t work. (After years of writing for Playboy, I’ve learned it doesn’t work for a lot of men either.) For years, I tried, unsuccessfully, not to “catch the feels” (even that expression is so telling about the way emotions are viewed regarding relationships, as if they’re a cold or the flu or some kind of sickness you need to get over).

I’m not speaking for all women. I know many women with a solid sense of self who happily have loveless sex. This piece won’t make them defensive. But a lot of women will read this and bristle, just like I did, when I used to read something that pushed back on the lie I’d built my entire identity around.

Or maybe you’re a trans or nonbinary person reading this, thinking “What quaint ideas about gender and sex this old trad con has.” And to that I’ll say, it makes sense to me that the generation of young women who have experienced and borne witness to some of the worst side-effects of unyoking sex from consequence and love that Perry meticulously outlines in her book, “rough sex, hook-up culture, and ubiquitous porn”—would take a look around and decide:

I’d rather be a man. Or more accurately, I’d rather not be a woman.

But maybe it’s the inevitable conclusion to the sexual revolution. Today’s youth are being fed an even more dangerous lie than the one that I was fed about loveless sex. I was told sex doesn’t matter. They’re being told biology doesn’t matter.

This is a tragedy.

I’m not suggesting we return to some Victorian era notion of sex or some 1950s era ideal about gender roles. I’m now 43-years-old and I’m in the first truly healthy, intimate relationship in my life with my (second) husband. We recently had a daughter. And in the wake of her birth I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversations I’m going to have with her and the conversations I wish I could go back in time and have with a young Bridget.

I’d tell her:

Sex can be empowering when you’re coming from a position of healthy self-esteem. If you’re coming from a place of trauma or insecurity, casual sex won’t heal that. In fact, it might set you back and undermine any progress regarding your feelings of self-worth. If you know your value, you’re less likely to sleep with someone who doesn’t value you. Cherish yourself and you will be cherished.

You shouldn’t have to withhold sex for a man to respect you; he should respect you regardless. Sexual empowerment has nothing to do with how many people you do or don’t sleep with—it has to do with how comfortable you are in your skin—no matter your decision. It’s not about waiting until you’re in love to have sex; it’s about making sure that first, you love yourself.

Don’t ignore that nagging gut instinct telling you “sexual liberation” leaves you feeling unfulfilled. You can still be sex-positive and accept that for you, sex can’t be liberated from intimacy and a meaningful relationship.

I regret being a slut. I regret it because I regret that those men can say they slept with me.

Still, that’s how I know I finally value myself.

Every woman should feel this way: Sleeping with me is a privilege. And you have to be worthy.

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Watch Bridget’s video reading the article herself, and talking about some of the feedback she's received, the assumptions people have made about the article, and her advice to the women who feel the same way.

I Regret Being a Slut Video

It was shocking to hear those words, “you’re in menopause” at age 42. I knew that it was possible to go into early menopause, but this came out of the blue. While I struggled to comprehend the news about my boob, the news about my fertility (or lack thereof) was even more jarring. It seemed so…final. It was as if I could hear the sound of a door slamming shut and being locked at the end of the sentence; or like I missed the last ferry ever to the island of fertility and I was standing on the dock, watching it disappear into the fog.

The doctor was so casual about it, too. Like she was telling me they were out of soy milk at Starbucks. A minor inconvenience, but nothing life-altering. My emotions were all over the place. (I assumed it was the menopause, of course.) I called my friend, sobbing.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” I said through tears. “I didn’t think I wanted kids. And now I can’t tell if I’m sad because it’s not an option or if I always wanted kids and couldn’t admit it to myself.”

Until I met my husband, Jeren, I’d completely let go of the idea of having kids. Most of my 20s were spent in the kind of anti-natalist nihilism that is so fashionable these days. When I was about 37-years-old my dad sat me down and said, “This is going to be awkward but…have you thought about freezing your eggs?”

“Dad, isn’t it already too late for that? Isn’t that like freezing the chicken after it’s been in the fridge for eight days? Am I ever really going to thaw out that chicken?”

“Well, I didn’t realize you had a whole chicken metaphor worked out,” he said.

“It’s a comedy bit I’m working on,” I said. He grunted, disapprovingly. The audience usually voiced sounds of pity. “—Clearly it needs work.”

“Bridget, it’s not too late if it’s something you want to do,” he said, trying to be serious.

“Maybe, but it’s insanely expensive,” I reminded him. “And I’m a Poor."

Egg freezing was something I’d considered as a concept but never really entertained the idea of doing for myself. I’d had plenty of friends do it and the process seemed horrible—the daily injections and the egg harvesting and the insane hormones and weight gain. Besides they all had baller jobs and could afford to drop the initial cost (usually somewhere in the arena of $6,000 - $20,000) not to mention the monthly fee of around $100 to keep those potential babies on ice.

When my dad had “the conversation” with me, I was pushing forty, single, waiting tables and just getting started as a freelance writer. I’d been living hand-to-mouth for so long, I didn’t know any other way of life existed. Egg freezing seemed like something that women with designer wardrobes, a 401K, and a mortgage considered. Not someone like me, a woman used to perpetually having $2.89 in her bank account. Women like me got knocked up accidentally in a blackout. We didn’t freeze our eggs and prepare for the future.

“You might meet a great guy someday and I just don’t want you to regret not having kids,” he said.

“A great guy?” I laughed. “That’s the best joke I’ve heard in a while.”

It was impossible for me to conceive of meeting a “great guy” and wanting kids with him as I sat in that restaurant with my dad, age 37, a little over 2 years sober, and as jaded as a woman could be about “great guys” after a decade of living in Los Angeles.

I explained all the justifications I had for not wanting to do it. Cost being the biggest. I told my dad if I can’t afford to freeze my eggs, I probably shouldn’t have a kid. There was also the fact that most women don’t even use their frozen eggs—the numbers I’ve seen cited range from 85% to 97% of frozen eggs go unused. Why bother with all of the effort and investment if it was unlikely I would ever use them? And finally—I didn’t just want a kid. I wanted a partner. A family. That seemed less likely than my chances of using my frozen eggs.

Looking back, I realize, again, I had no concept of how young I was, even at 37. This wasn’t the first time my own ageism would distort my vision and I doubt it will be the last. My other fallacy of thinking was assuming that because things had always been a certain way, they would remain that way.

I’d been on hamster-wheel of addiction, hustling to pay my bills, and trying to live as a “creative” for so many decades, it didn’t occur to me that my circumstances could change. That things would settle down; that I would settle down. That my finances could and would improve. That I’d meet that mythical great guy who inspired the primal urge to procreate. That the warning old timers gave me in early sobriety about having no idea who I was, what I was capable of, and what I wanted — was true.

“What are you feeling right now?” My friend asked me as I tried to comprehend the news my doctor had just casually broken to me.

It took me a minute to pinpoint what it was exactly—because at first it felt like defeat. In that moment I had to admit it to myself that all those women and men who told me someday I might change my mind about having kids—were right.

And then I realized my dad was also right. I should have frozen my eggs. Even at the ripe old age of 37. It wasn’t too late then. Now it was. What I was feeling as I sat in traffic under the 405— was regret; a sickening sorrow as I confronted a missed opportunity. The price of a decision I made, in error, and the cost I’d have to live with.

If there is one thing Present Bridget would tell Past Bridget sitting at lunch with her father is: Do it. Get your eggs frozen. Borrow the money if you have to. You have no idea what the future holds and if this a way to ensure you have options you might not know you want and might not have once your eggs become geriatric, the cost and the effort will be worth it.

There are things you have no way of knowing until you experience them. For me, being pregnant, the excitement of getting to be a parent with a man I love—these are things I couldn’t conceive of until they happened to me. And sure, frozen eggs aren’t a guarantee. They’re a very expensive insurance policy most people can’t afford that might not even pan out.

As I sit here and write this, pregnant with a miracle child, my superstitious pregnancy anxiety lurks in the background. I know that I got lucky and I’m praying things carry on in the very normal and boring way this pregnancy has gone so far—but it’s been a daily, sometimes hourly, effort to overcome that fear. To push away the knowledge that this is probably my last shot and try to enjoy the experience is a challenge.

All of my eggs are in this one basket and I want to be chill and open and trusting and in faith but there is a part of me that feels desperate and geriatric and clingy. If having frozen eggs could have given me just a tiny bit of peace-of-mind in this moment—even if it was a false hope—they would have been worth every penny.

This isn’t unusual. Throughout the entire pregnancy, I’ve wrestled with pregxiety that has shape-shifted with every trimester; morphed with every milestone; a goalpost constantly moving. After my first appointment with my OB-GYN at around 5 weeks I boldly proclaimed, “I’ll feel better once I know it’s viable.”

He looked at me and laughed. “You don’t think you’re going to be worried after that? It’s normal. Don’t beat yourself up for being nervous.” If only I’d listened.

In the very early days, when I was five weeks, I’d panic every time I had to go to the bathroom.

Am I going to be terrified of peeing for nine months? I worried.

But there were signs of life—morning sickness, exhaustion I’d never known before, persistent nausea, food aversions, breast sensitivity, extreme moodiness—that gave me some sense of her presence. Eventually, I stopped worrying that I might poop the baby out and got comfortable with the nausea as a sign that everything was progressing.

Week 13 hit and it all abruptly stopped. Other than feeling a little chubby, my energy came back, the nausea went away, I could work out again and there were days when I would forget I was even pregnant. Gone were the unpleasant but welcome reminders that there was a baby cooking. My pants didn’t fit and I just had to trust that everything was coming along fine. In fact, the only reminders were the constant tests. Being a geriatric mommy means endless tests in the first 20 weeks. Genetic tests. Non-invasive prenatal tests. Full 3D anatomical scans. Every test induced fear. And after every “negative” reading and normal scan—a sense of relief.

My relief was always short lived. These weeks were hard on me mentally—intellectually I understood the risk of miscarriage drastically went down after the first trimester, but emotionally I refused to let myself get excited or attached. In trying to guard my heart, I knew that I wasn’t allowing myself to connect to this growing being inside me and I’d feel guilty, like I was already failing as a mother. The fear would keep me up at night. While my husband and dog snored peacefully, I’d stare into the darkness, crying.

It was in that solitary darkness, trying to escape my own catastrophic thinking, when I turned to guided meditations for pregnancy on YouTube and podcasts like Meditation Mama and scrolling Instagram for inspiration.

There is a strong current of Woo in many of the things in the mommysphere. There are meditations and mantras and affirmations. Just a quick scroll on Instagram of the hashtag #pregnancyaffirmations will bring up all sorts of tricks to “train your mind to think differently and subconsciously remove those negative emotions.” I’m particularly susceptible to this kind of messaging.

I was a stoner hippie most of my life. I became a yoga instructor in my twenties where I was fully indoctrinated with quantum quackery. The mandatory film viewing during our teacher training was What the Bleep do We Know? Wikipedia describes it as “a 2004 American pseudo-scientific film that posits a spiritual connection between quantum physics and consciousness.” I loved that fucking movie. The “Woo” was a big part of my spiritual framework, if not the entirety of it throughout most of my 20s and early 30s.

When I worked on weed farms it was all about Mother Gaia and diva cups and positive thinking and crystals and law of attraction and placenta art. Home births were the only way to go—Gaia forbid you gave birth in a hospital and contributed to Big Birth. I learned of doulas and water births and the 2008 documentary, The Business of Being Born.

It was my hope that the Woo would kick in like some automatic response to being the bearer of new life. That I would be like so many of the examples I saw of this on Instagram. The mommy influencers doing yoga with their little bellies in lotus position on top of some mountain they just hiked that day.

One night, as I was repeating some fucking affirmations about how my body was a temple made to grow a baby and “I was chosen to be the mother of this child and I’m enough for her,” I just started sobbing. Nothing I was saying resonated with me. I didn’t believe it—or I couldn’t accept it. And again I beat myself up for failing to banish the bad thoughts.

I’m saying the affirmations. Why aren’t I Buddha yet?

The Woo failed me in pregnancy because New Age language puts so much pressure and responsibility on the mother-to-be for things she really has no control over. Thinking positively won’t stop a miscarriage in those early months. And it’s not because you didn’t say enough positive affirmations that you have a stillborn or your birth doesn’t go as planned.

The superstitions. The positive affirmations. It’s two sides of the same coin—which is very much me trying to exert control over a situation I have absolutely no control over. It’s all out of my hands, even if it’s in my body. And herein is the mind fuck that is pregnancy. (One of the many.)

Realistically, me worrying or not worrying isn’t going to affect the outcome very much. There are about five things I can do: take my vitamins, drink lots of water, sleep, eat well, and exercise. There are a couple of things I shouldn’t do. Drugs. Smoke. Overexert myself.

Everything else…is in Gaia’s hands.

I’m 43 and pregnant.

And even now at 26 weeks, I hesitate to write these words, as if the act of doing so will somehow jinx this crazy, wild miracle. My superstition comes from a lot of places: negative past experiences with my fertility and pregnancy; a catastrophic mentality that haunts me from a dysfunctional childhood; a fundamental core belief that I don’t deserve joy or good things.

Back in August, my life was proceeding the way it’s always gone. Adventure and travel were on the horizon. I was looking to book tickets to New York City and Europe and South Africa—it was to be a three-week adventure that theoretically would have happened this past fall of 2021. My husband, Jeren, urged me to take a pregnancy test because I was late for my period (again—more on that later) and my boobs were so sensitive he could barely touch them.

“Just take one, Bridget.”

There was no reason for me to think I was pregnant. Just two months earlier, I’d been told I was in menopause. Just a week earlier, I’d gone to my OB-GYN to talk about getting on birth control because she was worried since I’m so young in menopause, that I would get osteoporosis. I told her I was late again for my period and she said, “That’s the menopause.” And left it at that.

Yet still there had been that persistent inner voice repeating over and over again “you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant…” a steady drumbeat in my subconscious as every cell in my body started reacting to the hormones, the subtle changes that were already taking place, a faint whisper in my heart.

So I didn’t want to take the test because a small, secret part of me was hopeful—and I wasn’t in the mood to be crushed. It had been a rough couple of months on the fertility front and I felt at last I’d finally come into acceptance that having a child just wasn’t in the cards for me. I’d faced biology head on and purchased books with titles like Menopocalypse about the best workouts and diets for a woman in my condition.

“Please,” Jeren pleaded. “Before you book all these flights. You don’t want to find out you’re pregnant in Kruger National Park.”

My husband is endlessly practical and although I was defiant, I knew he was right.

“Fine—but it’s going to be negative.” I said.

No sooner had I finished peeing on the stick and started to say, “See, I told you—“ did the second line start to emerge. The pink line that changes everything.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”

Sitting on my bathroom floor, overjoyed and terrified, I started laughing and crying. My husband came in, shocked.

And honestly—we’re still in shock. Which is why I decided to start writing about it. As anxious as it makes me to publicly talk about being pregnant, like God will strike me down for getting too excited, at some point I have to come into acceptance about the fact that — there’s a strong chance I’m going to be a mom. And I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s terrifying. And even scarier is admitting to myself—and now to you—how badly I want this.

So I guess I’m doing this mommy blogger thing, now. Because I’m a writer and it’s the only way I know how to process the world around me and all of my confusion. I hope you enjoyed your first installment of “Geriatric Mommy.” Stay tuned for more.