Knowing laughter is not the use of humor as self-deprecation or deflection; it’s not the kind of painful laughter we sometimes hide behind. Knowing laughter is acknowledging the absurdity of the expectations that form the shame web and recognizing the irony of believing that we, alone, are trapped and entangled in that web. When I think of knowing laughter I think of the incredible volume of work written by Erma Bombeck and the poignant humor of Cathy, the comic strip written by Cathy Guisewite. Their creative work targeting motherhood and single life captures our vulnerabilities in a way that
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