When I read Little Women years ago, I had not yet written everyday. I had not worked through my own resistances or vulnerability. I have not yet reached into the small dark cave of my creative self. I had not yet documented my own daily experiences, peering with glassy eyes into the salt water of things I love and hate and what makes sense. I had not yet engaged with the intense unpleasantness of being a person. Well, I have now. Things changed.

Jo March is the main character in little women. She´s a writer, and she does her own thing. Rarely has a fictional character spoken (to me) of the multiple sides of a young woman´s life. This is what that includes: grief, rage, vulnerability, creative self, modivation, lonliness, intimacy with siblings and parents, hard work, social context, breaking away, and struggle). It includes her own romantic disappointment and her love interest in an international intellectual. Ha! Her romantic pursuits just one part of a truly multi-faceted life, and are shared as such. It includes her documentation of her life in addition to the living of her actual life. And the sharing of that life. I have never related more to a fictional character. Even more, I saw the movie with my own mother, a writer and documenter of human experience.

Here´s to an ongoing reinterpretation of topics from the past that speak more specifically to who we really are, what we really need, and how all of th isis actually experienced by a person.