Random Acts of Awesome

I have made a bit of a breakthrough in my quest to understand this state. See, yesterday afternoon I got sick of moping around feeling lonely and bad about myself. So, I did what always worked for me in Portland. I created a dating ad on Craigslist that is, if I do say so myself, pretty badass. I wrote out how I'm feeling at the moment about who I am, and what I'm looking for. Body of the ad below. Bozeman is a pretty small city, so I figured I'd get much less responses than I would expect in Portland, especially since I figured my ad was long and convoluted enough to weed out the good ol' boys who didn't like words. I was DELUGED with responses. So many. To the point where I'm having a hard time responding to the good ones, of which there are actually many, because of the sheer number. And the quality of responses is high. I definitely attracted the kinds of people I was looking for. Smart, open minded, aggressive, interested and interesting... Good qualit

Talking to my baby brother about quieting those voices in his head, the ones that tell him he's not a real man if his wife doesn't take his name, that tell him he's weak and lesser if he's not in charge... Makes me ALMOST glad to have grown up a woman in that religion. The messages we're all given, religion or not, are so ugly and destructive to our sense of self. My brother is a sensitive, aware, smart human being. Who is having a hard time with the concept of his incredibly strong, smart, self willed wife not wanting to change her name. He's having a hard time with it in part because it takes away from his sense of being masculine. Her need to maintain her own sense of self threatens his sense of self. While he was taught it was weak to allow a woman autonomy, he has never been forced to realize the weakness inherent in the inability to be strong and masculine within oneself, without need of subjugating others. That, right there? Is weakness. Relying on othe