laddersofsweetmadness

[laddersofsweetmadness]

the person who realised you could rearrange the letters in gossip girl to read “go piss girl” truly one of the great minds of our generation, madam your legacy

[laddersofsweetmadness]

This is what unconditional support looks like. All help should come without a contract---otherwise it's not really help is it? If you only help others when they meet your standards, you're just another bureaucracy. True kindness doesn't come with a test to pass before you can receive it.

-deep breath-

A 'no questions asked' food pantry means no questions asked.

When we're stocking our pantry, we are not looking at a person's clothes or their accessories or what kind of car they drove there in. We are HAPPY to see it BEING USED AT ALL.

I don't know anyone's situation. Maybe they got that designer bag at a thrift shop. Maybe its a knockoff. Maybe it was a gift. Maybe they got it when they had money and now they don't have money. Maybe they're getting stuff for a friend.

Maybe they have plenty of money, don't need to be taking stuff from the pantry, but they are anyway because we said-

NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

Do you know what happens when someone takes from our pantry when they don't need it? We're down one item. But maybe they tell someone that the pantry is there. Or maybe they come back to it when they need it. Or maybe they throw a dollar in the donation box. Or maybe they put an item on the shelf. Or maybe they come to our food drive.

WE DONT CARE.

We don't care who used it.

We care that it was used.

Im not a cop. Don't make me do cop stuff, I wont do it.

[laddersofsweetmadness]

[laddersofsweetmadness]

Click here to read.

Well, it’s finally here. My essay I’ve toiled anxiously with is available through The Argyle Literary Magazine. Baggage Claim follows the journey of a woman (me ♡) feeling carved out by her experiences with men, desperately wondering if she will ever outgrow these feelings of emptiness. It is an exploration of familial trauma, gender dynamics, and the complexities of maternal influence. Using my grandmother as the centerpiece, I paint her as a matriarch that despite her own struggles and imperfections, embodies strength and resilience. Her actions, from defending her space with a metal ball bat to challenging societal expectations, serve as a testament to her protective instincts and the weight of her experiences. The narrative delves into the nuances of power, vulnerability, and the indelible marks left by those who raise us and hurt us.

Typically, I only send out poetry, but I’m trying to change that. So, this is my first piece of Creative Nonfiction I’ve sent out there. I genuinely didn’t think this would be picked up by anyone. It’s a particularly vulnerable piece, so to say I’ve been agonizing over its publication would be an understatement. I can’t even begin to count the hours I’ve spent in panic instead of sleeping.

I hope women out there with similar experiences find a way to their own voice after reading this. I write for connection, and I know how isolating these experiences can be. You are never alone, and maybe, one day, we really will outgrow it.

Trigger warnings: Drug abuse, death, domestic violence, sexual assault

I can't dictate whether or not you like it, but I thank you for reading regardless 🩷🎀

[laddersofsweetmadness]

Joy Sullivan, from "Howl", Instructions for Traveling West

[laddersofsweetmadness]

— Frida Kahlo, from a letter featured in "The Letters of Frida Kahlo," (1934) (via lunamonchtuna)

[laddersofsweetmadness]

I hate when a tiny stupid thing pushes you over the edge and makes you freak the fuck out because it makes you look like a completely irrational tar pit of a human being. Like no I promise this is warranted just maybe not about that specifically I swear I'm well adjusted. Come closer stick your fingers in my cage

[laddersofsweetmadness]

[laddersofsweetmadness]

Chasing.

That's why they call it the pursuit of happiness; it requires a chase

[laddersofsweetmadness]

Wanna hug her so tight until our hearts become one.

[laddersofsweetmadness]

Albert Watson

Wisteria, 1985

[laddersofsweetmadness]

Ducks in the Rain, Frank Weston Benson, 1918

[laddersofsweetmadness]

I love libraries.

I'm browsing the WWI shelves (as you do) and notice a very old book about the war. I glance at the first pages that talk about how one day the war will be over and we'll look at this place and not see any signs of the battlefield.

Then it hits me. And I check the publishing date.

This book was printed before the war's end. Not written. Printed. The physical object was created in 1918, while the war in question was raging and the end was as yet uncertain.

Now I'm standing on the other side of the apocalypse, with this physical link to that era in my hands. I'm living proof that the war did end and life did go on and we can all look at the end of the world as a long-ago memory.

Reading old books is cool enough, connecting our minds and hearts through the ideas of people who lived long ago, but there's something extra profound about holding a copy of the book that comes from the time that it was written. It's a physical link between the past and the present connecting me to those long-ago people. A piece of the past come into the future that gives me the chance to almost take the hand of some long-ago reader, to hold something they could have held, connecting not just mentally but physically to their era, a moment of connection across more than a century.

Excuse me while I go weep.

[laddersofsweetmadness]

the intimacy of being stuck together in the rain

[laddersofsweetmadness]

"You tried to change, didn't you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake...You can't make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that."

- Warsan Shire

[laddersofsweetmadness]

[laddersofsweetmadness]

“You say ‘amateur’ as if it was a dirty word. ‘Amateur’ comes from the Latin word ‘amare’, which means to love. To do things for the love of it.”

— Mozart in the Jungle