Chicana on the Edge

Mentioning the unmentionable since 2004

Ask For What You Want, Part Two: People Pleasing

Are you good at asking for what you want? Some insight into those who struggle with it.

How Chicago Failed Its Most Vulnerable: The Heat Wave of July 1995

31 years ago, a three-day disaster revealed an ongoing one.

On the Eighth Day of Thanksgiving…

Disclaimer: since I became properly obese, I re-read these old posts and see my body dysmorphia and self-hatred and obsession with food and weight. It's sad. I'm grateful that I've finally started to lose the twelve pounds I put on over my awful, wretched summer of...

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On the Seventh Day of Thanksgiving…

I'm grateful for being an American. I never felt this way until I left the country for the first time in my life and finally used a passport at the age of 44. I went to Peru and Bolivia. There I saw what my life could have been if my grandparents hadn't hauled...

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On the Fifth Day of Thanksgiving…

I'm grateful for my new cell phone. This is why I have a new cell phone: In 2006, my husband's company began paying for his cell phone. In 2008, they got him a BlackBerry. I was so envious, I insisted that we get me a BlackBerry, too. We could afford it, since we...

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On the Second Day of Thankgiving..

I am grateful for my hard-won friends. It hasn't been easy to build such a strong network. Making friends gets harder as one gets older, plus many of us have had to figure out how to be a good friend through trial and error. I think my parents were part of a...

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Twelve Days of Thanksgiving

On the first day of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for my physical body. Yes, the contents have shifted a bit and I've had to let go of the dream of one day, one day, finally whipping myself into swimsuit shape, but here's the best part about my body: I go through most...

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Middle-Aged

Middle-Aged

Bob and I had drinks at The Wit Hotel in downtown Chicago last night. He took this photo which shows me the schoolteacher I could have been.

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Getting Out the Front Door

Some people spend their adulthoods moving from one career accomplishment to another. Some pour themselves into raising families and/or building a long-lasting marriage. Some improve their communities, help build companies, nurture their extended family or tend...

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Halloween Wins

Images of Halloween invoke death, decay and the unknown. They're the taboo subjects that spooked us as over-imaginative children and that we'll fear again as we get close to our own physical collapse. But the reason Halloween is my second favorite celebration is that...

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