In the beautiful Victorian house where I lived while attending college in Montana, I often played and sang loudly miserable songs about disappointment in love, like those from Joni Mitchell’s popular album, “Blue.” Years later I learned—and this is new in civilization—that there was actually a hope in me to be a disappointed woman. Aesthetic […]

At 17, I packed my trunk and guitar in Massapequa, Long Island and headed out west to college in Montana—determined to study art and music near the Rocky Mountains. I was excited about seeing the American west and learning new things about the world. But often I had another kind of determination—to have my way […]

Had I not studied Aesthetic Realism, I would have spent my life trying to be strong in ways that hurt me, and feeling that when I was tender and affected by things, I was weak. In The Right Of #1354, Ellen Reiss explains the trouble I had about tenderness and strength: A woman does not […]

Aesthetic Realism logically, beautifully makes clear that a woman’s greatest need is to like the world and see meaning in it. Like many people, I felt that to really need anything was weak, and I should depend only on myself. This attitude can have us feel we don’t have to listen to another person; we […]