vagina, valentine, and victory :)

My senior year of high school, my friend Andrea and I dressed up in red and black for Valentine’s Day—or, I’m pretty sure we referred to it at “Singles Awareness Day.” But, for me at least, Valentine’s Day is not about whether or not one has a significant other. It’s about love—all kinds of love! Not just romantic love. I’m starting a revolution. A love revolution. We can’t fully appreciate love unless we value all of its manifestations. Love is bigger than we’re making it.

The Vagina Monologues 2010

I realized earlier this week, that while autumn may be my favorite season, right now is my favorite time of year. I, along with four other awesome women, are directing Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and our own The SLU Monologues, which began as a response to Ensler’s play being banned on campus. The monologues are put every year around Valentine’s Day—or V-Day. The V-Day campaign, a global movement to end violence against women and girls, began in 1998, inspired by The Vagina Monologues. The “V” stands for vagina, valentine, and victory.

Backstage of the VagMons

The V-Day season also marks my anniversary with feminism, which has guided me to people and ideas that have changed my worldview and perspective on myself drastically. Furthermore, Valentine’s Day marks the day that my baby brother, Tom, came home from the hospital after he was born. And finally, this year, my family will celebrate my mom’s twelfth year of being cancer-free! My birthday and Christmas may be in December, but this is definitely the most wonderful time of the year. Nowadays, I still wear red and black for Valentine's Day, but it's for my costume for the monologues, not a battle cry.

For Megan Boken (23) and Emilie Parker (6) by Hilary Korabik

Emilie Parker (6)

Megan Boken (23)

Here’s a poem I wrote for Megan Boken, a Saint Louis University graduate who was killed this summer while visiting St. Louis and for Emilie Parker, one of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting.

 Contagious:

“her laugh, her laugh her laugh.”

In my heart I am holding your souls,

and I can feel you holding me back.

We are all blue-eyed blondes

with distinct laughs.

Now you two are angels, and I can feel

the flutter of your laughter echoing

my heartbeat.

Milan Kundera writes:

“The two sisters stretched out on their bed are not laughing

at anything concrete,

their laughter has no object;

it is an expression of being, rejoicing at being.”

You are still being, beating

in our hearts and in our memories;

your laughter is a whisper,

a reminder to ‘rejoice at being,’

for we never know how long we shall ‘be’ here.

In August and December I could feel

my heart hanging on a string,

the only thing holding it together was

your laughter.

Laughter and tears are lovers

who cannot bear to be left alone for too long;

today we are crying and in a few

we will laugh, because just as laughter

brings tears, tears inevitably

remind us to rejoice at our being,

to laugh, laugh, laugh.