I adore this article by Jessica Ravitz because it is sooooo brave and raw and gutsy and all the things I look for when I read a piece. She’s funny, snarky, but in an elegant, eloquent way. And she stands up not only for herself, but for all single women. I applaud her courage a thousand times over! You go girlfriend! I’ve excerpted the first part and then posted the link to her entire story over at CNN.
Tracy McMillan has gotten under my single-status skin.
I’m not sure how it took nearly a week for her Huffington Post column, “Why You’re Not Married,” to land in front of me, but it finally did. And now I’m fired up — not in an angry way but in the sort of way that made me skip to my desk, excited to type.
To hear it from the thrice-divorced McMillan, I’m 41 and not married because of one (or more?) of six reasons: I’m a bitch, a slut, a liar, shallow, selfish or not good enough.
Wow. Is that all? Maybe I smell, too.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got issues (c’mon, who doesn’t?), but I’m not owning these.
Perhaps she was talking about why her own marriages failed or was simply setting out to get a rise, which she did brilliantly. And while I’ve been guilty of occasional transgressions that might fit in some of those unflattering boxes, McMillan doesn’t touch why I’m not married.
Based on the buzz surrounding her conversation-starting piece, I’m laying down and lining up behind reason number seven: Life happens.
Before reading on, know that I am not and refuse to be woe-is-me. Like Jennifer Aniston, minus the killer body and bank account, I’m happy. Really, I am. I skipped to my desk, dammit.
Of course I’d love to meet and marry that one and only, but in the meantime I’m living my life, and I’m taking everything that’s been given me on the journey.
Maybe, like me, that’s where you are, too.
Maybe you spent your adolescence clashing with a stepfather who didn’t get you emotionally. And maybe the father who did get you had been relegated by the courts, when you were 2 and your parents divorced, to every-other-weekend access. Maybe your first love cheated on you, just around the time a second divorce rolled through your family. So maybe your faith in men and marriage was a little shaken before you teased your hair for the prom.
But that’s nothing some therapy and better hair sense can’t fix, right?
Maybe you’re a searcher with a healthy dose of wanderlust, someone who needed time to commit to furniture, let alone a man, because there was so much you needed to see, do and become.
Read the entire story and comment at CNN.
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