write me well

Tag: inspiration

  • Home Things

    We’re not going to talk about how potentially far-distant home ownership is. Nope. This is, instead, a post about home things in the context of the house where we’re renting.

    Some background:

    I’m in Portland right now, writing this from the lobby of my hotel while on an evening break from attending my first ever APGA conference. (That’s APGA as in American Public Garden Association, not Advocates Professional Golf Association. There can be a lot of grass in both, but it’s an important distinction nonetheless.) Today is day two of conferencing, day three of Portlanding, and whoof, I am already exhausted.

    Traveling for work is one of those life tasks that seemed glamorous and fashionably professional when I was a kid. Thirteen year old Kathy, my favorite lens through which to measure my adult achievements in life, would not believe that I am seated on a creamy leather banquette, a fluted pint of beer next to my laptop, typing away with an array of brass lights and murals and cocktails for company. She’d probably think it was freaking sweet.

    Alas, thirteen year old Kathy is not thirty-three, and she doesn’t understand that your own bed is the best bed, and home is home. (And that conferences, educational and inspirational and well-meaning as they are, are by nature, conferences. And are thus deeply exhausting exercises in note-taking, coffee-consumption-regulating, and in 2022, N95 masking.)

    So last night, when one of the coolest people I work with (honestly, she is so cool) invited me to her local best friend’s birthday dinner at her home, I was quick to accept. Yesterday happened to be the first full day of summer weather that Portland has seen, so while I’m sure the evening would have been exceptional regardless, it was blessed with the extra magic that is a Summer Solstice full of golden, mid-seventies sunshine and sitting on the grass with olives and soft cheese and chilled white wine with a group of people that haven’t seen the sun for six months. In London this was always the best experience and I am happy to report that it was the same here in Portland.

    The entire evening gave me a really interesting combination of feelings that I haven’t fully processed yet. That’s part of why I’m sitting here, writing about it. First, I was surrounded by such clearly amazing people. One of the women I met had a very similar recent experience to me – she had been living in Brooklyn for 12 years, working in corporate retail, and got laid off in the pandemic. Between that, the sudden distance created by an inability to visit home and her nieces, and the realization that retail is some ruthless-hustle-based bullshit, she decided to move back home and change careers. She felt an even stronger version of the bittersweet longing for Brooklyn that I feel for London, given how long she had lived there. But she knew she made the right decision and she is in the right place now, and she was happy with her imperfect decision because really, all decisions are imperfect.

    The amazing woman whose home we visited, who has the fortune to call the longest day of the year her birthday, had not only the most impeccable taste in all things design, but shares with me some fairly random passions. A jeweller by trade, she specializes in English antique pieces, and has her own collection of enamel Victorian mourning rings (one of my favorite types of antique jewelry), which she pulled out and shared with me on the grass in the backyard while the sun set. She even, as one of her pieces of daily jewelry, wears a Tudor-era memento mori ring – something I have aspired to have of my own for years.

    And then there was her home. An early 1900’s craftsman, with its small porch, original hardwood floors, chartreuse kitchen cabinets, and Persian stairwell runner of salmons-and-oranges-and-browns, was an absolute dream. White brick fireplace. MCM built-ins but a lived in, cream linen sofa. Palette-knifed original artworks and lamps with stained glass shades handmade by her father. An oversized, oil pastel Picasso gallery print the sole work living above the fireplace. Cupboards full of vintage plates and hand-thrown ceramics. And above all, an open, easy grace reflected in her hosting and her own personal energy, that permeated every part of the place. As I told her when I thanked her for her hospitality before catching an Uber home, “Not to sound completely creepy, but I love everything about the home you’ve created. It is wonderful.”

    All of which is the background to the first sentence I wrote here. We’re not going to talk about home ownership and how distant that feels. We’re going to celebrate the progress in what my home is now, an imperfect place that I share with a human whose imperfections complement my own, which all works together to create a place that I would very much rather be than in a swank boutique hotel lobby. So while my intent with this post was actually to talk about the specific pieces of interior design progress I’ve made in our own (albeit rented) craftsman bungalow, it turns out the bit I really wanted to talk about was how it’s all come together to feel like a home worth missing.

  • The Impossible Thing About Self Worth (…and capitalism)

    I sat across from my friend at the Market Hall in Victoria, warmly sequestered inside brick walls, surrounded by nine-to-five suits on their trendy lunch break, drinking the best latte I’ve had in months, wondering how on earth this beautiful person in front of me could possibly feel incapable.

    To me, she had so much to offer. A ceaseless, passionate energy, a way with words that a troubadour would envy – blonde mermaid’s hair and a knack for making any marbled knit sweater drape perfectly from her well-postured shoulders. And I sat there, thinking these things, knowing that she was envious of so much about my life. My career, my stability, my trajectory. She was afraid the way so many of us have been throughout the course of our lives, because she has no idea what’s next or how to get there. As we both sipped our lattes and went about splitting a chocolate muffin between us, I realized I was just as jealous of her.

    It struck me like a crack of cold air in that rosy warm space that the both of us thought we were in exactly opposite positions, when really, we were exactly the same. And I can’t help looking around me and feeling strangely like many of the amazing women I know in my life are in this same position and that it is total and complete bull shit.

    Waxing poetic about the downsides of capitalism isn’t something I’m generally drawn to. In fact, writing about anything that has a semblance of cultural importance is almost always beyond both my interest and remit. But the past few weeks have been such a trial and filled with instances of questioning what is worth – what is value – why do we do what we do? That even I, Piscean and ENFP and optimistic to a blistering, painful fault, feel compelled to address it. Why is it that we so aggressively measure ourselves against anything other than wellness and happiness? Why are so many careers, about things that so resoundingly do not matter, valued so highly?

    I wonder these things, three hours after my latte with my friend, in a different hipster coffee shop, now upgraded to a matcha latte, and realize that there is a very simple reason I don’t often contemplate these kinds of things. It’s fucking terrifying. If I think about it for more than five minutes, it’s like trying to wrap my head around a black hole (or space in general, which to me is not the final frontier: it is a terrifying endless mystery that I have no interest in considering or peering into).

    Only this black hole isn’t something I can wilfully ignore (because really, will I ever have to confront SPACE?). I have to participate in and engage with this black hole every day. I have to try and figure out what it’s actually all about so I can decide what my next career move is. I have to measure myself against its fathomless fiscal depths before I can give myself a speck of confidence that I’m on the right path. And that’s what really scares me.

    Keeping my nose stuck firmly in the past has long been my defensive tactic. A belief as unshakeable as it is absurd, that not knowing what the future holds validates not planning for it, sits nestled at the base of my spine, and it impractically refuses to dislodge. I focus on the lives of people that lived eight hundred years before me, people who even had we shared the same time would have been worlds away from me, and I can’t stop. I visit the places they lived, see the buildings they built, stand in the churches they prayed in, and feel a sense of connection and belonging, a strength of spirit, that I’ve come to live for. I tell myself that those experiences are the ones that matter, that they’re more important than the big picture – because maybe there is no big picture. And as far as defensive tactics go, it worked really well!

    Right up until everything blew up in my face.

    In the back of my mind, I always had a deeply underappreciated belief that not only was I great at my (capitalist) job, but that I would always be great at it and that there was nowhere to go but up. It wasn’t until about two months ago that everything changed and suddenly I was sat on my own, looking in the mirror, wondering what I was really good for, and where I could possibly go.

    A crisis of career confidence is never a pleasant experience. This was my first. I’ve had them before in the sense that I wished I could be a writer, a novelist, a columnist – anything that involved people loving my writing and paying me to produce it – and that I never was granted said wish. But then, I never really tried that hard. I always knew that the only thing to regret in that regard was that I hadn’t truly bothered. As a manager, though, since the moment one of my first DM’s sat me down and told me I was great, I had the luxury of lacking self-doubt of any kind. I knew I was good at my job, I knew I deserved good things, and I loved that about it. It gave me value and worth and I reaped wonderful rewards from it for years. This crisis of confidence was about that job, the one I was actually doing, not some intangible dream job crisis. It profoundly shook me up and prompted a resounding, excruciating, “WHY?”

    When I was living in San Jose before I moved back to England, I had everything going for me. If there was a time to be complacent, that was it. Stellar roommate, great job, ace colleagues, and my family close by. But I knew I was missing something and it was that sensation that brought me back over here. In attempting to answer that big old “WHY”, I’ve realized that maybe I had reached a level of stability that was endangering my life’s path, leaving me complacent when that wasn’t in the cards yet. Because let’s be real – would I be out here, asking these big questions, reconsidering a path I long since thought was sorted out, if the past two months hadn’t happened? No fucking way!

    Wasn’t this supposed to be about other women too, though, you ask? And capitalism in general? You’re right. Selfishly, my own turn in fortune has brought to light a bigger picture conversation about valuing a bottom line over the hard work of the people you employ. Customer service and retail are the absolute bowels of that aspect of capitalism. Where else can you work your ass off and yet everyone you work for – customers and big wig bosses – have a free pass to shit on you over PRODUCT?

    OVER PRODUCT.

    I have long been in this career for two reasons: people and their development. I am actively looking out for the people the brands I work for employ, trying to help them find what drives them, making sure they have a good thing going and that work isn’t just a place they come to pick up a pay check. My teams drive great service because they are supported and validated. It’s certainly not because they’re being paid exceedingly well or feel like they’re changing the world. But every day, we’re doing our job, and doing it well. If people can’t see that – or if they can, but they don’t think it’s enough – then maybe I am in the wrong field. And maybe I did need a kick in the teeth to realize I need to do this somewhere else.

    Which brings me to today’s coffee with my friend. That moment where we spent hours talking about the endless spread of opportunities in this world of simple rules – work for the man, get your money, do your thing on your own time – that starting from scratch is just as inspiring as it is terrifying. And I wondered at the ridiculousness of being able to preach that so confidently to her when I knew that I as soon as she got on her train and I went my separate way, that I would do anything but give myself the same advice. If she has endless choice, why don’t I?

    The answer is, I do. We all do. If we really want to take the advice that (particularly when you’re inordinately privileged by birth) the only thing stopping you is you, we can. But it feels real fucking impossible right now even though nothing is really that bad. So the next step is to get myself to believe it.

    How am I going to do that? Start with small truths, the ones that are easiest to swallow. I’ll begin with the illusive bright side, the mercurial silver lining of essentially getting demoted. Maybe the universe realized I didn’t so much need a job that was stressing me out beyond all belief, but that I needed the friendship of all of my amazing colleagues, something I’d denied myself due to a rigorous belief in drawing professional lines as a manager. Maybe I needed that kick to dislodge that feeling at the base of my spine – that not planning for the future is an okay life policy – and create a long game strategy. Maybe I needed the spare brain space that having less responsibility leaves me with to wrap my head around the exhilaration (and terror) of a fresh start.

    I genuinely have no idea where I’m going to go from here. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way about my life. But slowly, one day at a time, I’m going to indoctrinate that philosophy deep in my bones until I breathe its truth every day. Because the world IS filled with opportunities – I do believe that – and it’s up to me to grab them. And sure, there’s a lot of really shitty shit out there too, but if I can’t be one of the people out there turning it around, helping to give value to those amazing women that feel like they don’t have anything to offer, then what else am I gonna do?

    Time to get out there, to motivate, to encourage, to make them laugh and smile and get inspired. I may not yet drink my Koolaid, but I’ve got a tepid matcha latte, and that’s kind of the same thing, right? It’s time to do something bigger and be part of a solution. Retail isn’t shitty because it’s unworthy and filled with people that never tried hard. It’s shitty because all too often it thrives on the ceaseless and thankless work of countless people all for the glory of capitalism. While I’m in it, I’m going to continue to fight for those people and the struggles they face every day. But big picture, it’s time to figure out how I can do that in a bigger way.

    The unknown I’m about to face while I try and figure that out is not like space because it is terrifying (it is).

    It is like space because it is limitless.

  • Three Fave Underrated Chick Flick Leads

    Fine, not all of three of these gals are the leads – you got me. But you can leave that negativity at the front door and read on anyway, because I assure all three women are worth watching.

    Loretta Castorini – Moonstruck (1987)

    Cher is an icon. So you’d think it would be impossible for her to play a role where you don’t first and foremost see her as, well, Cher, right?

    Enter her Oscar-winning performance as Loretta Castorini. We’ll skip past the fact that this is also one of Nic Cage’s best performances (and best lines – “A BRIDE WITHOUT A HEAD” comes to mind, but “and I bake bread, bread, BREAD” stands out too) and focus instead on Cher. Moonstruck, one of the best romantic comedies knocking around the genre, starts off with 37-year-old widow Loretta’s engagement to raging milksop Johnny Cammareri, but the action really starts when Loretta takes it upon herself to invite Johnny’s one-handed younger brother Ronny (Cage) to the wedding.

    Loretta landed on this list because she works with whatever comes her direction with a woman’s particularly unquestioning efficiency. What’s happened to her has happened to her and she’s making the best of it. This skews her priorities a little from the get go, with a staunch superstition that all be done to a traiditonal T to avoid the bad luck she’s experienced through most of her life, but as in all good stories, that flaw turns out to be the driving force and undoing of the plot. Loretta is sweet but uncompromising, leaning heavily into her family and relatably struggling with a divided loyalty between her straying, mid-life-crisis father Cosmo and her supportive, sarcastic mother (played in another epic casting turn by Olympia Dukakis).

    Cher (that HAIR) & Nic Cage (those CHEEKBONES) in Moonstruck, MGM

    Mostly I am endlessly envious of Loretta’s PEAK 80’s makeover before her hot date at the Met, but having the strength of character to plant both feet on the ground, resist any ounce of self-pity, and a perfectly-timed, life-changing, post-opera decision to side with romance over reason are other strong contenders for why I wish I could be Loretta Castorini.

    Other Reasons to Just love Moonstruck Anyway:

    The entire film is quotable (“Old man, you give those dogs another plate of my food and I’m gonna kick you ’til you’re DEAD”; “Birds fly to the stars, I guess.”), its Italian-American/Brooklyn aesthetic cannot be overvalued, the entire adorable date between Olympia Dukakis and Fraiser Crane’s dad.

    Kate – French Kiss (1995)

    It could be argued that Meg Ryan single-handedly kept the chick flick alive straight from When Harry Met Sally on through You’ve Got Mail. Sure, she clearly got dead tired of it (see Proof of Life, In the Cut, and Against the Ropes for reference), but even that neck-cricking 180 can’t diminish the strength of her prior performances. And I’m here to tell you that, You’ve Got Mail fan girl I am, her turn as Kate in French Kiss is the best of the bunch.

    French Kiss flew a bit under the radar, most likely due to the fact that Ryan wasn’t starring opposite Tom Hanks, but her Kate to Kevin Kline’s Luc is a snappy, sarcastic example of great chemistry. Kate, eyes scrunched, uttering the line “All men are bastards!” and, moments later, “Of course you know him! All you bastards know each other!” remains one of my favorites.

    Meg Ryan (and kind of Kevin Kline), getting her squint on, 20th Century Fox

    But more than her connection with Luc, I love Kate because of her transition from relationship-reliant to strong solo female. Sure, she ends up with Luc in the end (on their own vineyard in Bordeaux, no less), but not before she decided she was perfectly happy ditching the fiance that had already ditched her when he comes back, tail-between-his-hella-90’s-dressed legs, and flying home on her own.

    Kate also spends a lot of the movie associating her geographic home with her identity as well. In the process of gaining Canadian citizenship, she considers herself no longer an American, and when an embassy worker denies her that treasured maple leaf flag, she later declares herself “currently without country”, somewhere between proud and self-satisfied at how much it no longer matters. If you’re struggling with getting outside of your comfort zone or with re-defining what defines you, a girl can do far worse than using the strangely-rootless Kate as a role model.

    Other Reasons to Just Love French Kiss Anyway:

    Bizarrely excellent 90’s French soundtrack (featuring Kevin Kline singing La Mer), specifically mid-90’s French fashion/aesthetic, Jean Reno, the entire exchange between Kate and the concierge at the George V.

    Patti – Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

    I know, I know – Diane Lane’s Frances is supposed to be the protagonist of Under the Tuscan Sun. But after watching this chick-flick staple hundreds of times over the years, I’m here to tell you the truth: Frances’ pregnant, jilted, lesbian best friend, played impeccably by Sandra Oh, is this film’s true hero.

    It’s easy to get confused about this, as Diane Lane did get top billing, and Patti fulfills many best friend/side kick tropes. She bestows Oprah-like advice about the crossroads of Frances post-divorce life, she provides emotional support when Frances doesn’t exactly cope, and she delivers zingy-one-liners about Frances’ shitty ex and her comical new situation in Tuscany. But what Patti does even better than this, and does better than Frances, is rise from the ashes of an absolutely shitty set of real-life circumstances when her long-term partner leaves her when she’s seven months pregnant with the baby they’ve been trying to have together for years.

    Talk about an excuse to quit life. I can’t imagine something scarier than facing parenthood on your own when every expectation is that it’s the last thing you’ll have to do. But Patti eats her words about how probably not great an idea it was for Frances to have bought a villa in Tuscany and instead, in her own moment of cheesy Oprah crossroads, ditches San Francisco to join her bestie there. Yeah, it’s peak Hollywood privilege to have that kind of fallback plan, but it’s still pretty brave for Patti to even in those circumstances power through and have and keep the kid she’d been planning on raising with her ex. If I can handle even one life crisis with the humor and humility Patti does, I’ll consider myself a success.

    Sandra Oh, being great, Touchstone Pictures

    Other Reasons to Just Love Under the Tuscan Sun Anyway:

    That goddamn Tuscan scenery (plus two Positano cameos), “D’you want to come over?” “…maybe later?” FACEPALM, Patti swoop-dancing with the baby amongst the trees, “Okay, yes” and the entire Polish construction crew, everything utterly ridiculous Katherine (the inimitable Lindsay Duncan) does.

  • The Bucket Theory

    I’m a chronic mom-caller. Like, I may live over three thousand miles away from my mother, and I may be a grown-ass thirty-year-old woman, but if I go more than 2-3 days without speaking to my mom, it’s weird. I used to call her on my way home from work, and now that I have my own place, I call her as soon as I’m home, eating my pre-made dinner on the couch while I tell her about my day and listen in turn about hers. I’ll call her on my days off when I have literally nothing new to tell her. I’ll call her when I discover pre-filled strawberry jam and cream scones for sale at Tesco. Chron-ic.

    Whether it’s because I do such a faultless job of this on a regular basis, or because my mom has a tendency to feel like she’s a ‘bother’ if she’s the one that calls me (“I never know what you’re doing! You’re so busy. You could be at work.” “Mom, I keep telling you. If you call me and I’m busy, I just won’t pick up the phone.” I digress.) – my mom hardly ever calls me. But this afternoon I was off work, sitting at a coffee shop, when my phone rang and it was my mom. Calling me!

    We talked about a lot of things, as we always do. Work stress, life stress, good things, challenging things. And at one point, somewhere between good things and challenging things, I mentioned my Bucket Theory. I feel like I tell everyone and their mother about my Bucket Theory, so I was 110% sure I’d already not only mentioned it to my own, but explained it in depth. But it turns out I hadn’t, and because I will never not enjoy the sound of my own voice – especially when expounding my own life views – when she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard about your Bucket Theory” – I LEPT at the opportunity. And as a result, the topic is fresh on my mind, and I figured no time like the present to infect the internet with it.

    So here, un-asked for, is my Bucket Theory.

    We spend an inordinately large amount of time while we’re growing up and getting older being told exactly What Will Make Us Happy. People, society, strangers, LIFE. They all act like there’s a one-size-fits-all formula for how to make a life for yourself that genuinely brings you joy.

    What I spent my twenties doing was unlearning all of that.

    Attaining happiness is only universal in that it can always be broken down into buckets. One bucket, six buckets, twenty buckets, every person is different. The buckets come in all different sizes. Maybe yours are all tiny and easily filled; maybe some are bigger, and need a regularly scheduled top up. But the constant between everyone’s buckets is this: the sum of their parts is a Satisfying, Happy Life. (Accidentally just typed Lie, and I’m gonna go ahead and ignore what that typo is trying to tell me.) The only way your buckets can be Wrong is if they hurt people in the process of being filled. As long as you have peaceful, kind buckets, I truly think your only priority in life should be to define them and fill them however you see fit.

    I believe I’ve gotten to the place I am in life because I figured out what my buckets are and made a big deal out of prioritizing filling them the fuck up. Having my family in my life is a big bucket – but for me, geographic closeness isn’t a requirement of keeping that full. I rely heavily and happily on technology to do so. Having a job that’s satisfying, but also allows me creative freedom in my style and on my days off, is another big old bucket. It needs a regular top up in that I always want to feel driven and like I’m developing the people around me, but I’m quite certain my career bucket will never get any bigger. It will always play second fiddle (second…bucket?) to others.

    And then there are the surprise buckets – Being Near Medieval English Things turned out to be a pretty major one. Nobody told me when I was thirteen that where I live would bring me more happiness than my college degree itself. Tattoos. Financial Independence. Writing – well, no surprise there. Seven year old Kathy could have accurately drawn the size of that bucket right after she wrote her first short story about a girl sneaking off from a family picnic to find a dragon in a hillside cave. It will probably always be my biggest bucket.

    But if your career bucket is your biggest, wahey to you! You will find no judgement here. The same if being physically close to those you love is a big bucket. I get that too. Making a family. Having a dog. Achieving fame. Immersing yourself in other cultures. Helping the environment. Listening to great music. Chocolate chip cookies. They are your buckets. It is your life. Too many people get down on themselves because their buckets are different or strange or maybe even because they’re not different enough. I assure you, it doesn’t matter. Nobody has to deal with whether or not something brings you happiness and fulfillment except You.

    So on this doing-its-damnedest-to-pretend-its-not-Spring April afternoon, if you’re looking for an extra bit of happy in your life, take a look at your buckets. And once you figure them out, there are only two things you need to do: chase their fulfillment like nobody’s business, and never apologize for it.

  • History

    Last night Drunk Me did Future Me a favor and spontaneously booked an overdue trip to Oxford for the following morning. (There are worse drunk decisions to make, I’m sure.) The forecast said light rain from 10am through the evening; the reality was a luminous fall day that alternated between broken clouds, bright sunlight, and scattered downpours. In short, your ideal wandering-through-a-thousand-year-old-city fall weather.

    Oxford formed the completion of, shall we call it, the Empress Matilda list. The Empress Matilda list started to form when I first visited the Tower of London back in April and the reality of how close I was to the history I’ve admired from afar for years truly sank in.

    Arundel was the first stop, where Matilda took up the invitation of her friend Adeliza, her step-mother and the former Queen Consort of England, to “come visit” (read: to kick off her bid for the throne in a period of English history that would come to be known as the Anarchy). It was a drizzly, wet spring day, and I narrowly avoided a solid soaking on my way back to the train station that evening. Standing in Arundel Castle was my first experience of sharing steps with one of my historical idols. It dun fucked me up and I LOVED IT. So the Empress Matilda list grew, and Wallingford was next.

    Wallingford Castle was the stronghold of Brian Fitz Count, one of Matilda’s most fast supporters, who ruined himself for no apparent reason other than his passion for her cause (insert courtly romance projections here). Wallingford oversaw the whole of the Thames Valley, bolstered by its vital river crossing, and throughout the Anarchy it remained, through Brian’s zeal, a pro-Empress battlefront. All that’s left today (I’m looking at you, Civil War) is a few scraps of wall and the rolling earthworks upon which the Norman castle originally sat. When I visited Wallingford, it was a high summer day – zero clouds, a thousand rays of sun, and market stalls and ice cream trucks spread from the town square to the riverfront. I stood on a small bridge between the castle meadows and the remnants of the motte and took a 360-degree video, sweating in my shorts and t-shirt and surrounded by the buzz of summer fauna, wondering at the sensation of breathing in the same space as Matilda, as Brian.

    Winchester was next.

    Matilda came close – SO close – to being England’s first ruling queen. Winchester was her moment. It was before she made it to London and the mob chased her out – and it was after her cousin Stephen, the king, had been captured at the epic Battle of Lincoln. Welcomed by Stephen’s own brother, the exceptionally oily Bishop Henry of Winchester, she processed down Winchester Cathedral and was named Lady of the English. She didn’t know that within six months Stephen would be back on the throne and the war would have returned to a bloody stalemate, so I imagine it felt like the first step in finally winning. At least, that’s what I imagined when I was sitting in the same cathedral.

    After Matilda was driven from London, Winchester became the scene of one of her many narrow escapes. Surrounded by the enemy (Bishop Henry’s men – see, oily!), her half-brother Robert of Gloucester held off attack and was captured so she could escape alone with none other than Brian of Wallingford, alone on horseback, riding astride like a man to the point of exhaustion until they reached the safety of Devizes Castle. And after seeing what she had escaped in Winchester, I had to see what she escaped in Oxford.

    That brings us to today – or, last night, when I decided I’d left off the last trip in my journey of major Matilda destinations for long enough. So I caught a train from Marylebone Station at 9:00am this morning and made my way to Oxford Castle. I arrived just in time for the 10:30am castle tour and walked up the same stairs Matilda did, while under siege, wondering how she could possibly escape what seemed in every way to be a full-proof trap. Most people would have given up, surrounded by an enemy army with no hope of reprieve (Stephen had famously let Matilda leave Arundel Castle unmolested back in 1139 under the excuse that she was simply going to go visit her brother Robert, a decision that historians still wonder at and I’m sure Stephen himself largely regretted for the rest of his life). But not Matilda. A freezing night in December, three months into the siege, she and three of her knights wore white cloaks and were lowered out of the castle onto the frozen Thames with knotted bed sheets, where they escaped by walking directly through Stephen’s encamped army under cover of snow, darkness, and luck.

    All of these adventures, all of these moments, are true stories taken from the exceptional life of an exceptional woman – and they are only a handful in the grand scheme of what she endured. Prior to the Anarchy she had already been sent to Germany to marry the Holy Roman Emperor – twenty years her senior – where she then traveled much of Europe with her husband and was by all accounts an appropriately involved and loved imperial consort. When her husband died she was pulled back to Normandy and forced to remarry, only this time to a cocky little shit (the fourteen year old son of an Angevin count) who, upon their marriage, hated her as avidly as she hated him. Their tumultuous marriage eventually produced the first Plantagenet King, Henry II, but not before she attempted to leave Geoffrey and her father forced a reconciliation while she hid in Rouen for over a year.

    Matilda should have been remembered as England’s first ruling queen, but instead she’s unknown to most, and in the ultimate irony, was honored even in death by an epitaph that couched her importance entirely in her relationship with men: “Here lies the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry. Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring.”

    So if you’ve ever wondered why I wax poetic about this woman, or why I’m so fascinated by her story, or why I got an enormous portrait tattoo of her, that is why. Every person that asks me is one more person that gets to find out she was so much more than a daughter, wife, and mother. She was a passionate woman desperate to be accorded the respect that men and kings had purely by virtue of their sex. And I can’t get over the fact that not only are women still facing those problems 900 years later, but that her story is so little known to them.

    The struggle isn’t new – but we can sure as hell be inspired by those who fought it before us. Matilda was certainly one of them.