Hattie C. Cooper's Blog, page 6
October 20, 2015
October 13, 2015
When What You’re Creating Doesn’t Look How You Want
“I can see it up here!” she said, tapping the side of her head, “but then when I try to draw it, it looks ridiculous.”
It was a summer weekend a few months back and I was playing a game with my fiancé and future in-laws. His mom was lamenting over her inability to draw a picture clearly. The game, Telestrations, is a combination of telephone and pictionary and triggers some of the best laughter I’ve encountered in years. It requires players to draw pictures quickly, which means eventually you...
October 7, 2015
Ask What You Want Wednesday: Don’t Want to Ruin a Good Thing
Dear Hattie,
I’m currently seeing this guy and we just started seeing each other. I have GAD and take medicine for it. I keep reading into things too much and I don’t know how to control it. I don’t want him to think I need constant reassurance either. When we’re together he is the sweetest guy and I feel so important to him, but when we talk on the phone I think I read too much into things. I don’t want to ruin a possibly good thing because of my anxiety.
Thank you for sending in these thoug...
October 2, 2015
September 29, 2015
What It’s Like to Have a Vagina that Doesn’t Want to Have Sex
“They are called vaginal dilators,” the doctor said. She held a smooth white box in one hand and a colorless rubber spear in the other. It looked like the world’s least sexy dildo.
I was mortified. I didn’t want to anyone to know about this. Ever. This was going with me to the grave.
As I hurried from the doctor’s office to my car, an innocent looking paper bag clutched under my arm, I kept reflecting on how love, relationships, physical intimacy, and now sex seemed so much more difficult for...
September 26, 2015
How to Be Someone’s Date to a Wedding For the First Time
When Jared and I first started dating, it was in the spring. Summer was right around the corner, which means wedding season was right around the corner, which means I spent a lot of our first few months dating worrying about having to be his date to a bunch of weddings. Because I’m selfish. But I’d never done it before, been someone’s date to a wedding. And the idea of it made me want to buy a one-way ticket to the Bermuda Triangle and become this decade’s Amelia Earheart story (but where did...
September 19, 2015
You Have a Choice
Allow yourself to take flight.
September 16, 2015
How to Gain More Confidence (and why it’s so damn hard to achieve)
Anxious people are, by nature, critical thinkers. As in, we are able to analyze a lot of details all at once.
Back when I taughtcollege composition I drilled the importance of critical thinking into my students like a pizza chef pounding fresh dough mercilessly. I basically would spend the entire semester shrieking “You only have one life and youbetter be a critical thinker in this world!!” (Reminder: the word “critical” isn’t used in the negative connotation here. It means you are objectivel...
September 12, 2015
7 Risks You Need to Take in the Name of Love
Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea of risk-taking. As a naturally anxious person I’m not the most instinctual of risk takers. If I could, I would spend the majority of my time sitting in the poetry section of my favorite bookstore, cross-legged on the ground, like a creepy poetry-crab blocking the aisle.
But I also know a lot of life’s most sparkling moments, those times when it feels like your skin is a little too close to a fire, come when you’re taking a risk. As my great...
September 9, 2015
Asking the Hard Questions (even if it scares you)
As we wove through the dark valleysof the Pacific Northwest Cascade mountains, our headlights slicing a softly lit path for us on the freeway, I read another question. “Who do you believe your partner will help you become?”
Jared and I were driving back from our weekend in Idaho and left especially late to try and avoid Labor Day traffic. It was almost midnight. We’d rode in calm silence for several hours, but then I asked if we wanted to answer some premarital type questions. You know, thing...
