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Welcome to the Wonder(ful) Women series! This is my newest, and most fabulously kickass series yet, because I'm featuring real-life female superheroes every week. My hope is to bring awareness to stories in the news, and make the women I know in person realize how much they inspire me and everyone around them.


Off we go.

Jackie Speier
Yesterday, the US House of Representatives voted to cut $40 Billion dollars in food stamp assistance, but not before Rep. Speier had her say. If only those who voted to cut the program had actually listened to her, had seen the glaring hypocrisy and done the right thing. If only.

What did she do, you ask?


She stood in front of the House with a steak, a bottle of vodka and a jar of caviar, attempting to make a point that no one seemed to comprehend.

Members of Congress routinely get their meals paid for when they are traveling, sometimes well over $100 per person per day....and they won't even give poor people $5 a day to live on.

Keep up the fight, Jackie. Please.

Geena Davis
You know she's an actress and all, but did you know about all the other super awesome stuff she has done?

She was a semi-finalist for the women's US Olympic archery team and can do some sweet tricks. She's a member of  MENSA. She's been a vocal Title IX activist for years and launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media, which focuses on reducing stereotypes in the film and television industry.


And she was so completely taking selfies before they were popular.

Kris 
This is one of those women that I am lucky to call a friend. We hardly ever see each other in person anymore, but through the wonder of the internet, I still get to peek in on what she's up to.

She is a youth minister for a local church and works almost constantly to help others.

When the floods started, she took action almost immediately. I am not sure she has sat down or slept to be honest. She's been coordinating volunteers and running food collections and more.

When a medical crisis hit my family, I knew she was the person to call for guidance and wisdom and peace in those moments. I don't think I could ever thank her enough for what she did.

When our circle of friends lost one member unexpectedly, she was the rock we clung to, the one who found the words we all needed to hear.

Kris, thank you for being you. Thank you for being an unending source of positive energy, for lending help to anyone who needs it, for always being there for your church, your community, your friends.

I am blessed to call you a friend. I love you.

Welcome to the Wonder(ful) Women series! This is my newest, and most fabulously kickass series yet, because I'm featuring real-life female superheroes every week. My hope is to bring awareness to stories in the news, and make the women I know in real life realize how much they inspire me and everyone around them.



Off we go.

Diana Nyad
What did you do on Labor Day? I'm going to guess that swimming 110 miles wasn't probably what you did...but it's what she did. 

In the open ocean. 

At 62 years old.

While vomiting the entire time.


Diana swan from Cuba to Key West, becoming the first person to complete the trip through shark and jellyfish infested waters without a cage. The journey lasted 53 hours. 

She's only attempted the trip a whole bunch of times in the past and failed. She did it for the first time when she was 28. 34 years ago.

She is strong and powerful and surrounded herself with the most amazing support team, but the most impressive thing about her?

Her sheer determination.

She is an inspiration to anyone out there who sets a seemingly unattainable goal for themselves and 


Jeanna Kaye
We're going to do this quietly, okay?

Jeanna is the voice behind My Children Think I'm Perfect. She's funny and open and a vocal advocate for everything she believes in. She rides motorcycles and makes pickles like a boss. She has an expressive and creative mind and invents things most people could never even envision in their heads.

She makes them real. 

She is real.



She also shaved her head to raise money for children's cancer research earlier this year.

Those two things about her have combined this month, as she is creating, and then auctioning her art and donating the proceeds to Donna's Good Things. Please check out the link and bid. 

Beautiful art from a beautiful person for a beautiful cause.

Thank you, Jeanna. 

Anonymous
Again with the virtual high fives to an anonymous writer who opened a figurative vein and wrote about something deeply personal and painful in the hopes that sharing it with the world would help someone out there who needed to read it.

Earlier this week, an anonymous writer told the world of her experience as the victim of domestic violence. She documented in beautiful simplicity what life is like when you are beaten down, first emotionally and then physically in a cycle that becomes almost impossible to escape.

Escape she did, and now she shares this pain so that others out there reading it will know that they aren't alone, that there are people who understand, that there are victims who got out, that there is hope.

This woman, brave and gifted with her words, expressed a frustration to me last night. This piece has picked up a lot of traffic, and may be her most-read post ever, and she can't take credit for it publicly. 

I have hope that someday she can stand before the world and put her name with this story. For now, though, she is a hero. A hero who must still remain shielded from the man she spent years being afraid of. 

A hero who saved herself. 

A hero who found her voice.

A hero who may have saved someone else.

Anonymous, thank you for being brave. Thank you for being strong. Thank you for doing what you did. Thank you for trusting me with this. Thank you for sharing.

Love you.

Welcome to Wonder(ful) Women! This is my newest, and most fabulously kickass series yet, because I'm featuring real-life female superheroes every week. My hope is to bring awareness to stories in the news, and make the women I know in real life realize how much they inspire me and everyone around them.



Off we go.

Suzie Kozisek
I'd bet you haven't heard her name, but you may have heard about her story.  She is a mother and grandmother in Iowa, and in a strange medical twist of fate, got to be both at the same time.  

Her daughter, Ashley, wanted to have children, but was told that it would be too risky for her to attempt to carry pregnancies because she has pulmonary hypertension. Ashley underwent IVF procedures to remove eggs to be fertilized and frozen in 2010, but she required a gestational surrogate to help bring the children into the world.

Her mom, Suzie, volunteered.

Though she was older than ideal, the doctors decided that she was healthy enough and had successfully carried enough pregnancies herself to give it a shot. The first pregnancy resulted in a little girl in 2011, and she gave birth to twin girls this year. 


Grandma of the year, right here. 

Lady Gaga
Okay, so she's out there sometimes. Okay, so it's more than sometimes. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born to a Roman Catholic family and was writing her own music by the age of 14. 


She's had more than her fair share of controversy, this is true. She does a lot of what she does for effect. It's not common to wear a dress made of meat or hatch yourself out of an egg on stage.

She doesn't just make music, she is the personification of performance art. She is hair and makeup and wardrobe and dance and light and props. My youngest child is a ridiculously huge fan of hers.

She's also not just a musician. She is, for a good many people out there, a hero. Perez Hilton is quoted for saying that she writes really deep intelligent lyrics with shallow concepts. Often misinterpreted, she stands up and speaks out for the issues she is passionate about, the most well known of which is youth empowerment. She started the Born This Way Foundation in 2012 after the worldwide response to the song of the same name helped young people embrace who they are.

Put your paws up, baby, because you were born this way.

Alexa Bigwarfe
There is this beautiful tapestry of writers on the internet. Some of us are on the fringes far away from the experiences of others, but connected nonetheless by our desire to write it and share it with the world. Then there are those who's stories run parallel to us for a little while or for just a moment, and our lives touch one another.

Alexa is one of those people.

I met her a while back now, though I couldn't say when, but I'm sure that we were brought together at some point through our stories of grief.

Though our stories are not very similar at all, we share the truth that we put out there for the world again today, that we both navigate this world without a child who should be here. Today, on the Day of Hope, we both share our stories of loss so that others out there won't feel so alone.

Photo courtesy of the CarlyMarie Project Heal

Instead of taking her grief and sitting with it, she has become a voice in the universe for the condition that took her sweet Kathryn, twin to twin transfusion syndrome. She is a safe harbor in the rough seas for the parents out there dealing with this often catastrophic condition. She is a place for information, for support, for love, for a voice that whispers I understand and I will help you.

You can find her on her blog here and on her Facebook page, No Holding Back, here.

She is a pillar of strength, and she inspires me every day to work towards helping others by sharing our stories.

Thank you, Alexa. I am blessed to call you a friend and so grateful that our stories on that beautiful tapestry intersected.

Welcome to the fifth edition of Wonder(ful) Women! This is my newest, and most fabulously kickass series yet, because I'm featuring real-life female superheroes every week. My hope is to bring awareness to stories in the news, and make the women I know in real life realize how much they inspire me and everyone around them.



Off we go.

Meghan McCain
She's smart, she's funny, she's got bigger balls than most people in the world of media these days. She's also a daughter of one of the most well known Republican senators in the country. 

She's been in the spotlight for most of her life, standing on stages beside her father during his campaigns, and blogging about his run for the Presidency in 2008. Trained in journalism, she interned at Newsweek and SNL.



Originally registered as an Independent, she changed to Republican during the 2008 election, but repels labels in general. She's socially liberal and has spoken out publicly for gay rights, immigration issues and chastises GOPers for being inconsistent about pro-life philosophies. In her opinion, if you don't want women to have abortions, you have to give them birth control because they're still having sex.

She stands up to her dad, she challenges the conventional wisdom. She called Ann Coulter out publicly. She sees a war brewing in the Republican party and thinks that the younger generation has a chance to revolutionize the party. She's been quoted as saying, "the GOP can be the party of pro-sex 24 year old women. It can." She is definitely a force to be reckoned with, and I happen to think she is absolutely correct about the war coming in the party. 

She has a new show coming up on the new network Pivot, which she describes as something between the Karsashians and CNN. It's called Raising McCain. Call me intrigued.

Lucy Eades
You probably don't know who she is, but by now you may have heard about what happened to her. Like many, many women, she was urged to cover up when nursing her child.

At a local recreation center in Burleson, Texas, she was told by an employee to cover up repeatedly. Instead of being embarrassed or made to feel shame for what she was doing, Lucy stood up. Literally. She stood up and stood up for her absolute right to nurse her child in this public place. She told the female employee that her right to feed her baby was protected by the law, and she was absolutely correct.


45 of the 50 states have specific laws protecting a woman's right to breastfeed, covered or not, anywhere they are legally allowed to be, and that list includes Texas.

This issue caused World War III to erupt on my page yesterday. Nursing women are not to be shamed.

If you don't want to see boobs, don't look. Period.

Katy Maher
If you don't follow this woman already, I'll give you a second to get over to I Want A Dumpster Baby and come back. Go ahead. Go. I'll wait.

In the highly unlikely chance that you don't already know and love her, I'll tell you a little bit about her.

She's sober and kicking ass at it.
She's the mom of the two cutest babies in the universe, Hall and Oates.
She's a blogger and she just announced that she is writing a book.
She's one of the most honest and open people in the internets.
She's wicked gorgeous and has legs that won't quit.
She's funny, genuine, real, awesome.
She's the reason that elevator camera operators come to work.


So those are the things that you know if you are a fan of hers.

I'm lucky enough that I get to know more.

She lays it out there, she opens herself up and throws her vulnerability before her readers in a way that is rare. She doesn't gloss over the things that are hard, that are ugly, that are difficult to admit. She talks about it all.

She talks about it all except for the stuff she doesn't talk about, and that is what I respect her for the most. (And this is probably the part where she's gonna cry and blame me for making her cry, and I get that because I'm doing it right now, girl.)

Katy, you are a rare and beautiful gift to this world. I'm so damn grateful that you are sober and that you are here and that you are a mama and that you are my friend and that you share yourself with the world....all of it.

Thank you for being you.

Welcome to the third edition of Wonder(ful) Women! This is my newest, and most fabulously kickass series yet, because I'm featuring real-life female superheroes every week. My hope is to bring awareness to stories in the news, and make the women I know in real life realize how much they inspire me and everyone around them.


Off we go.

Lynda Carter
This woman single-handedly made me believe that I could be a superhero. She inspired an entire generation of under-roo clad little girls to truly think that they could fight for truth, freedom and justice. 



She isn't just Wonder Woman on tv, she fights for all those ideals in real life too, speaking out as an advocate for pro-choice legislation, LGBT rights and women's cancer research. She revealed publicly that she has struggled with alcoholism as well. 

She personified the character we grew up loving, and she's who we automatically associate with the role. She is smart, strong and beautiful. She is still unbelievably gorgeous today, and turned 62 last week.

Thanks for proving that women can kick just as much ass as the men, even in heels.

Irena Sendler
We have all heard the story of Schindler's List and the man who helped to save the lives of over 1200 Jews during the Holocaust. Irena Sendler, the woman who saved close to twice that many Jewish children by smuggling them out before they could be shipped to concentration camps. Some were snuck out of orphanages, others away from families who would be taken shortly.

Her story was not widely known until her death last week at the age of 98 and has never received the attention and adoration of Schindler's. When she was caught by the German authorities, she was beaten, tortured and set to be executed, but somehow survived.

She was humble until the day of her death, insisting that she hadn't done anything out of the ordinary, and that any good person would have done the same.


A member of an underground group of exiled Polish government officials, she constructed a complex secret network to get the children to safety, hiding them in ambulances, in coffins, in suitcases and more.

She kept detailed records on where each child was from and where they were sent, hiding them in glass jars buried next to a German base. They were never discovered, and when the war ended, she turned the information over to authorities so that surviving family members could attempt to find their children.

She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

This woman is a hero. No doubt in my mind.

Dina Fentiman
Through my lifetime, I've come to know too many people who can call themselves suicide survivors. Someone they loved, someone near and dear to them, someone they weren't ready to live the rest of their life without, chose to go anyway.

Dina is one of them. She is also the voice behind The Plucky Procrastinator.  You can find her on Facebook here and on her blog here.


Her husband and the father of her children took his own life in 2009.

She is one of the strongest people I know, truly.

Instead of letting this event destroy her, instead of allowing herself to be a victim, she has become a force to be reckoned with in the world. She is a vocal advocate of mental health in general, and specifically advocates for awareness of depression and anxiety as they often contribute to suicide.

Every Monday on her Facebook page, she hosts Mental Health Mondays, offering support, information, hotlines, and more. Today she has featured a few pieces on children of suicide.

She is making a difference, a real difference, in the lives of individuals and their families every.single.week. because of what she does.

Dina also happens to be one of the kindest, most genuine people in the world. Thank you, Dina, for sharing your journey with it and for using it to help others.  I am blessed to call you a friend. xoxo

Welcome to the second edition of Wonder(ful) Women! This is my newest, and most fabulously kickass series yet, because I'm featuring real-life female superheroes every week. My hope is to bring awareness to stories in the news, and make the women I know in real life realize how much they inspire me and everyone around them.

Off we go.


Malala Yousafzai
Maybe you've heard about her. I hope that you have. If not, I'll tell you a little bit about this amazing young woman. She is 16 and from Pakistan. She is a vocal advocate for women's rights in one of the most oppressive areas of the world. The Taliban has banned girls from attending school off and on since they came into leadership in the area.

When she was 12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for BBC chronicling what she saw and experienced, as an oppressed female in a place where gunfire is accepted as part of life and those who rule do so with fear and intimidation. That blog prompted a documentary about her story the following year.

Last year, she was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by the Taliban, but much to their dismay, she lived. She was sent to a hospital in the United Kingdom for rehabilitation. A petition in her name, titled I am Malala, has been written in the United Nations, calling for all children, male and female, around the world to be given access to proper schooling.


She was featured on the cover of Time's Most 100 Influential People in the World edition, and she certainly is an inspiration to girls everywhere. Thank you, Malala, for being strong and brave.

Jennifer Lawrence
Now, now, now....before anyone starts wondering how or why an actress made this list, hear me out.

I love this woman for a few reasons.

First, she's Katniss. Katniss is kickass. She's one of the strongest female lead characters maybe in the history of time (we'll ignore what happens by the end of the third book for now because it made me throw it across the room). She's also Tiffany from Silver Linings Playbook, who may be one of the characters I've related the most to ever on a screen. So there. (and, for serious, don't watch that movie if you've got rampant mental illness in your family without fair warning).


Second, she fights against every Hollywood stereotype. Though she's thinner than most women in the country as it is, the powers that be in Hollywood have chastised her for being too heavy. She's basically told them all to STFU about her weight, and for that I adore her.

Third, she doesn't take herself seriously at all. She knows that fame is fleeting and that she gets paid millions of dollars to stand in front of a camera and say words. She's humble. Truly humble. Something rare in this world, and refreshing. She laughs are herself. All. The. Time.

Fourth, she's freaking hilarious. She has a wicked sense of humor, she can throw just about anything back at anyone, she photobombs other celebs all the time and she flipped off the paparazzi at the Academy Awards after she tripped going up the stairs to receive her award. What's not to love?


I have hope in my heart that there are more little girls who will grow up to be like Jennifer. She is a role model for girls who want to do what they love, without being required to fit into a certain size or behave a certain way.

That, and she could probably kick your ass. In heels.

Allyson Nyman
I didn't start this series intending to include a blogger each time, but it may end up going that way for the simple fact that there are so many of them with amazing stories to tell.

Allyson told one of those stories yesterday on her blog, the crumb diaries. While she almost always shares the funny and the quirky, the anecdotal and the hilarious, life isn't always funny when you've been chosen to be Logan's mom.


Sometimes it's hard.

Sometimes it's really freaking hard.

She works harder than most people I know, she loves that boy with every ounce of her being. She has chosen to share him with us all, not just because she's open, but because she wants people to understand that there are families out there different than they ever imagined they would be. More determined to do right for their children. More vocal in their advocacy because they have to be. More patient because life demands it of them. 

She is all those mores and more.

She doesn't just do all that, no, no, no.

She works full time. She writes. She sews slombies too, which are pretty much the cutest handmade monsters ever. A project that she started to work with Logan on, it's become something much more than that, with slombies now being sold on etsy (but good luck getting one, they sell out almost immediately). She also donates them quite often to be auctioned for charity, because this is how amazing she is.


She's been working on having Logan's art transferred from paper to tattoos, which is so awesome that I can't even put words together to make sense about it. Just believe me when I tell you that I love, love, love this idea to the moon and back.

She is a supermom if ever there was one, and I'm proud to call her a friend.

In the highly unlikely event that you aren't a fan yet, go check out her Facebook page and her blog. You will be inspired. Every. Single. Day.

Ally, I'm so glad that Logan chose you. He's a lucky kid.

A while back, I attended Comic Con and sat in on a panel about Wonder Woman. The consensus was that there hasn't been a movie made yet because the world isn't ready for her to be a lead character yet. I say we change that. Prove them wrong.

I am beginning this series today with three women, none of which I have ever met in real life. I will tell you why they are all heroes in my eyes. I hope that as this series progresses, we will find that there are far more women out there kicking ass and taking names than we've been adequately credited for.

I give you the first three Wonder(ful) Women.


Sen. Wendy Davis
If you haven't heard about her, you might want to crawl out from the rock you've been living under for the past few weeks. She is the female Texas state Senator that staged a marathon filibuster to block a vote that would drastically restrict abortions in the state.

She stood and spoke for the rights of women for hour after hour after hour, unable to sit or even lean. While a protesting, angry crowd swelled outside, she continued. While she was chided for wasting time, while she was harassed by her male counterparts, she continued.

The eyes of the world watched as the word spread of this history making filibuster. She succeeded in stopping the vote, even though they attempted to sneak it in illegally when the time had run out - thereby exposing even more inappropriate behavior on the part of those elected.

This bill wasn't just about late term abortion, as so many would like you to believe. It's about limiting access to health care for women, as this bill would effective close down almost every clinic in the state. It's about women like her refusing to be dictated to by men.

Unfortunately, both for her and the women of Texas, the Governor seems bound and determined to get this law passed, regardless of how many special sessions he has to call to do it. Regardless of the fact that when the bill passes, it will likely be stopped by court actions like delays and injunctions, primarily because this bill, like so many others, seems to violate the "viability" cutoff in Roe v. Wade.

Where Sen. Davis will go from here is unclear, though there are many calling for her to run for Governor.


Go on with your bad self, Wendy. You've got a legion of women cheering you on.

Sheila Quirke
I love this woman. Like, all the way down to the bottom of my soul.

She is the voice behind Mary Tyler Mom, and it was through this strange and beautiful online world that I found her.

Like too many people I know in this world, her life was changed by cancer irreversibly when she lost her precious little girl, Donna. Instead of mourning quietly and silently moving on with the rest of her life, she has become a force to be reckoned with in the universe. She has spoken directly to the hearts and souls of the mothers who have lost children too, she has allowed people glimpses into the life she had before and the life she has now. She has weathered everything thrown at her with grace and class.

She has refused to sit idly and let this disease define anything about her. She is a fighter. She is honest and insightful. She tells patients and families that it's okay to be angry, but that you should never let go of the hope that only someone who has walked her path can comprehend. Her charisma and eloquence have helped to raise thousands and thousands of dollars to combat cancer for other people's children.


She is, simply put, one of the strongest women I have ever had the honor to know.

Sheila, my life is better because you are a part of it. The world is better for having your voice. You give us all hope. You can bring light to even the darkest moments, and when you're on your knees in agony, you must know that we, your friends and readers, your fans and donors, are there with you.

We love you. Thank you for being you.

Anonymous
This person isn't truly anonymous in the sense that I know exactly who she is, but I will keep my word and protect her identity for the rest of my days. I relate to her on a level that I relate to very few people, in many ways because we have so many things in common. Things I would rather not have in common with anyone else.

There is a solidarity, a peace in knowing that you aren't the only one. There is strength in realizing there are other voices out there telling stories that seem eerily familiar. There is a sense of relief that can only come when you understand you aren't alone.

The fingers that typed out an anonymous post about family abuse, about post traumatic stress disorder, about seeking therapy, about making a clear decision to pick herself up and move on without this baggage belong to her.

That post elicited a remarkable response. I had people coming out of the woodwork to share stories, to relate, to ask me to thank her. Support groups were formed because of her words. Lives made better, realities brought into clearer focus, loads lifted.

She gave me the strength to confront my own demons, to write about them. She is a constant cheerleader, reminding me why I do what I do, that I deserve to be happy. She is the calm in a storm.

Thank you, mystery woman, for all that you are and all that you do. Namaste.