Women are valuable teachers in society, and are often overlooked. As I reflect on my life, I notice the amazing lessons I have learned from so many women in my life. Here are some of these women, and what they taught me. My middle school teacher I don’t know how or why, but I became…
The role of families in our society is more subtle than we realize. When we look at the function of society, we probably focus on the setup of our government, businesses, churches, and so on. But family plays a key part in the function of society: support. Many people would not be where they are…
I’ve always been impressed by my father’s consistent patience and optimism. Even in the darkest of situations, he would portray optimism among his frustrations. I also consider myself very lucky to have a good dad, as I know many people are not that lucky–including my father himself. My grandpa was the stereotypical distant, absent father…
Four years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Loki Mulholland, the son of Joan Mulholland, who was heavily involved in the civil rights movement. Joan grew up when race was a hot-button issue, and participated in sit-ins, secret meetings, the Freedom Rides, March on Washington, and various protests. She received backlash from friends, family,…
Recently we got to talk to Melyssa Webb and Dana Robb, two Big Ocean members who attended the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Summit held in Washington, D.C. in June. https://endsexualexploitation.org/cesesummit2019/ We asked them about their experience at the conference, learned more about what sexual exploitation is, and how we can help prevent it. Here…
As humans, we are faced with making choices every single day. They’re often simple: what should we eat for breakfast, what should we wear, should we put on makeup or not, et cetera. Some of them are bigger than others. Whom should I marry? Where should I work? Should I be a working mom? Should…
One of the hardest things to watch as I get older is my friends have children while I remain single. As a woman who grew up in an extremely family-oriented church and culture, I understood from a young age that motherhood is an honorable part of life. So, watching most of my friends step into…
Our capacity to create and sustain human life is a tremendous power from which society can recognize and then begin to organize around.This framework challenges the current predominant social assumption that the sexed female body is less than fully human and therefore an inferior existence. Those words on the Big Ocean Women website stood out…