Brooke

“Womanhood as a “chronic, low-level stress” is even messier than it sounds, for two reasons: First, it’s very possible that female and male biologies respond differently to that stress. When male rats are exposed to these chronic, mild stressors, their swim time in the forced swim drops in half pretty much right away. After six weeks, it drops in half again. Female rats, by contrast, take three weeks to drop their swim time in half…and it doesn’t change after six weeks. Female rats exposed to chronic, mild stressors persist more than males do. They work harder in the face of difficulty; it takes twice as long for their brains to shift into helplessness. Even female rats, it seems, #persist.”
― Emily Nagoski, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“At some time, every Negro in the armed services asks himself what he is getting for the supreme sacrifice he is called upon to make.” —Pittsburgh Courier, November 9, 1944”
― Steve Sheinkin, The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

“Fearing cold and flu season, I fist-bump the credit card signature pad.”
― Helen Ellis, American Housewife