How to follow up a post like the last one? While the subject matter might have taken a few regulars off guard, one thing I am consistent about is praxis. While it’s useful to identify an issue—whether the intricacies of a balanced left hand or the mechanics of abuses being swept under the rug at the conservatory—my chief purpose in life is to relentlessly chip away at the things that seem intractable and make them more approachable. A sense of possibility is crucial for tackling difficult tasks, and I’ve built a career out of finding creative ways to get through them.

Something in me changed after I saw Dear Lara. I’ve engaged with lots of media pertaining to sexual assault/harassment in addition to the stuff my friends and I discuss behind closed doors and in DMs, but Lara’s film cut across some threshold I didn’t know there was anything beyond. Perhaps what’s changed more than anything is where I am in life. A beloved colleague once delightfully described perimenopause as a jet pack of rage. Unbound. Feral. Above all, motivated. It makes sense that the average age when a survivor of child sexual abuse goes public is 52. Middle age, though turbulent in its own way, has a lived-in quality that is hard to find—and trust— in earlier decades.

That’s what I’m sensing right now. This topic has always been important to me, but before now, I felt unable to contribute more than a whimpered “me too”, while also worrying about diluting my brand and jeopardizing my career by showing up as my whole self in my writing. I’m probably the last person to realize it, but that is such a stupid and self-limiting perspective. I counsel students dealing with shame to stop doing the work of their perceived detractors for them, and here I was doing the same thing to myself on a much larger scale.

So here’s what’s next on this front: first, all pedagogical content will be on the front page of the blog, as usual. New courses are coming shortly!

I plan on devoting a meaningful portion of my energy towards advocacy and activism, and it will live here, as well as on social media. I’m in the initial stages of curating a collection of essays—you can read more about it, including how to contact me anonymously via Signal, by navigating to the “Advocacy and Activism” page. More soon.