Learning Confidence

Hey friends, I took a while off writing anything that was for the public because the truth is I got really lost for a bit there. Looking back on my last blog entry is crazy because I thought I was really solving some shit, didn’t I? I wouldn’t say I wasn’t but I was at the very beginning of an ongoing battle with my personal demons. It has been a full year and some time since my last post and again a lot has changed. I want to say that I am constantly learning how little I actually know. 

I am still with my therapist that I started seeing at the end of 2022. This is the best therapist I have ever had and I am so lucky to have found someone I can connect with. I was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease last January. Surprise, Surprise! I was mad because I went off accutane two years prior and after many blood panels, my doctor finally ordered an ultrasound of my liver. 

“It’s pretty fatty, I don’t know,” my doctor said over the phone. 

“So, is this a NAFLD diagnosis?” I asked. 

“Yes, I would say so.” She stated. 

She then got me in with one of the worst doctors I have ever been seen by. It was a hepatologist zoom meeting. When I entered the zoom meeting the first thing he asked was, “have you been overweight your entire life?” Then he concluded that what I needed to do was “very easy” and just lose a pound a week otherwise I could die and if I can't do that, then I can think about surgery down the line. I was pissed. 

I decided to quit drinking that day. I told my doctors and they all said, “Oh, you can still drink. Fatty liver is just diet and exercise!” Then once I had quit drinking, my liver enzymes went down drastically and my liver finally started to heal. A few months later at another panel my doctors suddenly said to keep not drinking. Now, that they saw it was maybe helping? Another doctor had a counter argument that I had been changing a lot of other habits probably so it couldn’t just be the drinking. Love, how they assume a lot because I haven’t changed anything besides that and I don’t think I have lost any weight but I have been working out still exactly how I was, and eating as healthy as I can but nothing crazy. My days of yo-yo dieting are behind me so no drastic changes in diet.

 I understand the liver filters in different areas but everything I have read about drinking also made me wonder what would happen if I quit drinking so I tried that! Fast forward to a month ago I had another ultrasound and my doctor said that my liver looks completely healed and there are no signs of NAFLD anymore. It is wild being a fat person in America, I will tell you that much. I also found out later that I am genetically predisposed to NAFLD. 

Ever since I read the book, Quit Like A Woman by Holly Whitaker, it has really stayed with me to be honest. All the science she talks about ruined alcohol for me and I think it took me a while to really let it sink in that it wasn’t helping me in any way. From when I read that book and wrote about it to now it was always in the back of my head when I would indulge in drinking again. Whether it was the hangovers or the heightened emotions after a couple drinks, shit just changed for me over time. I started to wonder if my liver was still suffering from the damages of accutane and then continuing to drink was just pouring salt on a wound after getting off the drug but apparently that is just nonsense according to all these doctors. 

I was not in a good place a little over a year ago, and when you are upset drinking is like adding gasoline to a fire. Every time I would drink my mind would just go straight into a depression and then crazy anxiety the next day. I learned that when you drink it changes the levels of serotonin in your brain, and there is an influx of GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid), which causes people to feel calm but once the alcohol leaves the body there is a withdrawal symptom thus creating lots more of anxiety.

Alcohol is similar to xanax in which your body starts to replace its natural ways of coping with anxiety, with the need to self-medicate. This teaches your brain that you cannot handle anxiety-inducing situations and it actually increases the amount of anxiety and stress in your life. I also read that the only way to teach your body to cope with anxiety is to go through it. What a beautiful truth. So, I took that plunge and dived deeper into my healing. 

2022-2023 were also the years I came close to quitting comedy. The surge of having to focus on your online presence gutted me because socials already made me feel depressed. I have never got off a social app and thought to myself, “wow, that was such a nice little scroll. I feel so good now.” As a comedian and an artist it is really discouraging having to focus on views when it comes to the content that you’re putting out. When I started comedy, it was taboo to post anything online, and now comedy has done a complete 180. 

There are lots of positives here however. Creators can burn their own path now without gatekeepers in a lot of ways. But if you’re like me and your content talks a lot about topics that are considered R-rated for social media you will get flagged or silenced a lot. I was so frustrated because all my videos would get flagged for the content whether it was talking about sexual health, abortion, human rights, or a painting with some titties in it. All of it gets tossed into the void. 

It feels like nothing carried over from before the pandemic in terms of credits. I also personally feel as though, there are some decent acts on all the streaming services, there’s also a lot of garbage comedy being put out now. It really sucks working years and years to perfect a craft and then suddenly someone two years into making comedy content goes viral for a silly video and now they are selling out venues. Good for them, but also what was the point of all the time I spent working on performing and networking?

 It also feels like if you aren’t what the apps want to be talking about you just go into the void now. I talk to comedians of all levels and they all feel like their brains melt when they sign onto instagram. Even people doing well feel insecure because they feel they are gaining followers for how they look and not their content but… lol I don’t know what THAT is like but I also do kind of miss the days that an audience was your only way to tell if you are good. I even get trolls now that say they think I am using a laugh track or PAID ACTORS to laugh at me. Is it that hard to just accept that a woman can crush? I am so flattered y’all think I have that budget for all that extra shit.

There’s nothing like being on stage, it is my favorite thing in the world aside from painting and fucking but there is so much bullshit that goes with the spices of life. And everything I just said was just the online part of my life and job, now. 

I also want to get into a more personal part of my life here. I have always had a big, open heart and have had a hard time differentiating who is genuine and who is using me. Sometimes it feels like one really should look at a lot of other people in the industry as just coworkers. It is confusing to someone with a tender heart because one of the reasons I loved comedy especially when I had started was the community. 

I think a lot of comedy scenes have gotten increasingly more clicky because now, we are working on an online persona. People are focusing on their next post rather than actually getting to know each other. Comics rarely ever watch each other at shows anymore, everything has moved online. It is very isolating and especially now that I am the only woman on a show a lot of the time for me. To the handful of people out there that book more than one woman or really any minority, thank you. This seems to be crazy for some people to get but people feel more comfortable in the green room when they have someone like them in there and in the audience. 

Social media has really done a number on everyone, not just in comedy. When there is a lack of real human moments there is a lack of empathy. I gave up on one of my closest friendships in comedy last year and I never saw that coming. As the years went along it was amazing growing together but all good things come to an end and people change.

I have always tried to lift up other people in the scene when I can, I booked this person to headline for some of their first shows even when they said they weren’t ready. I took them on the road with me when I got offered one of my first headline gigs out of town, and I stuck up for them when they did stuff that other people judged them for. I even tried to bail them out of jail when they got arrested. 

I started to notice they weren’t booking me until I asked if they were going to, this is months after they started it. They brushed it off as it being hard to book a show with multiple hosts but I see men do it all the time, in fact I rarely see guys book people they don’t like. It was strange to me because we also aren’t in a scene like NYC or LA. I guess I am naive to think you book your people but I just see lots of other people do it and it is fine to have favorites, booking is also a business but that is also why you should give back to the friends that helped you when you were still finding a voice. This person was also canceling plans and then I would see them be in other friend’s IG stories and they started leaving me on read. You can feel when a friendship changes. 

I was lucky to have a therapist to encourage me to stick up for myself and call out the behavior but when I did I will always remember that person said, “remind me, if I do this again.” Maybe I’m crazy but I feel like getting feedback means you try to take it and do better the next time. Another thing they said to me once when I had a falling out with another comic was, “that’s why I never get close to anyone.” It made me sad because what is life without a little vulnerability but then it also made me think I could easily be *anyone*

Right around the same time I lost another long-term buddy that I was close with since college. They went into some sort of state of mania last year and they cut me out of their lives eventually. I spent a lot of time trying to convince them to go get impatient care but some people just do not believe in therapy and you can’t convince them otherwise. I also know that it must be so crazy to be in such a state and everyone is telling you what to do. It must have been terrifying for them and I wish we had better and less stigmatized mental health resources for people.

 It makes me so sad because therapy is so needed to get through major trauma. This person poured into me so hard and over time I realized that I do not have the capacity to help this person in the ways they needed but I still tried so hard. I went to visit them, I invited them to come see me, reconnected them with old friends and it just felt like the mania took over and it was harder and harder to understand what they were saying.

They suddenly went missing and after a month I finally reached out to their family to see if they had heard from them. I just wanted to make sure they were okay because I really thought they had died. Once I had reached out to their family, everything sounded a lot worse than I ever even knew from their family’s point of view. It was really devastating news and I still gave their family my number to give to them.

Eventually, they did reach out to me acting like nothing happened and they were already over everything traumatic they were going through. This was insane considering the thoughts they were having but I was so scared they would cut me out that I tried so hard to be comforting. It was one of the most painful times in my life trying to just get through to someone so lost.

Finally, at one point they confronted me for contacting their family when they were missing and they were angry about it so they cut me out anyway. That is so fair but I still think about them and miss them. I hope one day they do get the help they need even if it means they will never talk to me again. I know they weren’t in a stable mind but again this just added to the depression and self doubt even more.

There were also people I would meet over the years that would seek me out because of comedy and say they are a fan and want to be friends and then once we got to know each other I would find out they were just wanting to start comedy and trying to use me as their jump off point. COOL! There are genuine people out there that have asked for my help and if you’re reading this, chances are you’re not this kind of comic, but what I am talking about is, climbers. Climbers are people that quickly become your friend, use you, then move on from you and sometimes they even make you out to be the psycho in this dance.

 It is insane to me that these people would blow up my phone sending me jokes they wrote for notes without asking and then when I would see them publicly complaining about being told they should do more open mics because they feel they don’t need to (Being less than a year into comedy) and I try to tell them that mics are an important part that you can’t skip over- then they scold me and unfriend me. Or they just stop talking to me and unfriend me and still say hi in big group events. Good luck getting far in comedy if you can’t take feedback kindly but demand people’s time and energy when it works for you, though. I hate that the most, there are so many people that just want to talk at you instead of with you and the minute you open up a smidge, they’re gone.  

All of these changes and truths darkened my mind. I forgot how to act with strangers too. I have had people hit me up to hang out in the last year and I was closed off and anxious. It was just too much change in such a little time and the overall dread in the world is infectious. 

Everyone’s brains are melted and they are seeking out ways to get attention in the worst ways. Online bullying is at its all time worst. I know a lot of it is the fact that people are super fucked up from the pandemic and haven’t been socializing in the way we all used to be and it just bugs me. A lot of these people making passive memes and shit without naming names are such cowards and probably would leave everyone behind if the world burned tomorrow anyway.  

Everything’s bleaker than it has ever been, I remember thinking to myself, “why would anyone quit comedy!?” Now, that thought crosses my mind all the time. Comedy is harder than it has ever been, there are way more people which is great but it is just chaos lately. The alt-right wave of comedians are also making so many people feel unsafe. Then there are the fake-ass male feminists who say they want to be so inclusive but only if you can benefit them, they want to fuck you or they happen to actually think you are funny. Lots of bros starting shows and booking the same five women/non-cis men… It is insane to me how many all-male line ups are back and just how quickly we continue to hold women to a higher standard in comedy and everything else in the world.

 Lots of men will argue that this is false, but look at Kathy Griffin for example. She got straight up CANCELED for FIVE years for sharing a stupid picture of her holding a bloody Trump mask. Do we hate Trump or not? It’s sad that people that run everything support that shit. She lost everything for a silly photo. Meanwhile, Bill Cosby got acquitted, Chris D’elia, a known pedophile, is still touring and allowed on every social media app where there are lots of children. Dave Chappelle is spewing hate speech and getting paid tons of money for it, and I get flagged for saying Abortion on my sad little profile.

So, I am walking away from my people-pleasing tendencies. 2024 is my ten year comedy anniversary! I am done trying to fit in with people that don’t want to work with me. My goal was to try and release a special or album by the time I got to ten years and I am making that happen all on my own. I want to have something to show for and if anything were to happen to me, and it is nice to have a body of work to share with my loved ones. 

Due to all the changes in comedy these days also makes me feel like I need to change the way I write and find some kind of loopholes to post content that doesn’t get flagged for being inappropriate. EVEN THOUGH, reproductive health is healthcare and everyone has sex. It is crazy how men can talk about dicks and shit but anything sexual from me is a huge no-no. 

Quitting drinking was the one thing last year that kept me going through it all. I realized that chasing that anxiety without alcohol made me connect with my inner child again (so cliche, I know). It is really fun getting on stage and feeling all my emotions and I feel like I have more control.

In therapy, we dove deep into my childhood and past trauma and came to understand why I strived so hard to be everyone’s friend and why I seek approval from strangers. 

Growing up, I never fit in, I hated growing up in Dallas, Texas and my parents put a lot of pressure on me to be amazing. Also being put on diets as a youth really messed with my relationship with my body and food for the rest of my life. I constantly wonder day-to-day what it would be like to not think about food and how it will affect my body but thanks to bad societal pressures that are still very much a thing, I will battle that for life.

I reread my journal from high school and was flooded with all the reasons I became who I have been for years. I read a sentence that said I was getting broken up with and it was fine because I intended to be a “really fun party girl” from then on. And, boy, did I!?

It reminded me that before I dated that stupid boy who broke my heart, I came out to my mom as queer when I was thirteen on our way home one day and her response was that she thinks sometimes women are queer because they can’t get a man. Then she asked me if I felt like I couldn’t get a man. I remember blowing up and then we never really touched the subject again for a long time. Funny, how I spent a lot of time proving that getting a man is really easy. It’s finding a good one that is hard. 

I tried to date women throughout my early adulthood but I always felt a ton of shame. Getting on the apps and putting myself out there to women and having no response every time was devastating and scary. The truth is after revisiting these memories with my therapist I realized that I am still a pansexual person. 

I connected with my thirteen-year old self and remembered I said I think I may be into all kinds of people, not just men. I am attracted to personalities of course. It gave me peace for my lost young self but I do still also wonder what my life would have been like if I just was accepted for being queer and maybe I wouldn’t have thrown myself at stupid boys so often in my youth which was very distracting. Maybe I would have had more confidence in who I am today but c’est la vie.

My therapist and I uncovered a lot last year and I am so lucky to be able to do so. It helped me see that a lot of the anger and resentment I see is being reflected onto me from someone else’s own demons they haven’t processed and to take it all lightly because they are also still learning. My therapist also taught me that my obsession with friendships was because I was never told I was good enough growing up. I wanted to be loved as I was and didn’t think I deserved any of that. 

 I was able to finally stop trying to help others as a distraction from helping myself, which is so important. Losing all those people that I thought wanted to be my friends was a blessing in disguise. I realized they weren’t actually friends, they were just using me in one way or another to get where they wanted to be. Yes, I got a little closed off for a while but with time I have been able to let in lots of new people in my life while still protecting my heart.

I traveled a lot in 2023 and ran my album in many different cities. I realized how large the world of entertainment really is and how better off you are just being a light for other people. I leaned into the people that actually want to work with me and now I have just recorded my first comedy album and will be a full year off the booze on January 16th. 

I now feel more confident than I ever have and it took a lot to get here. I still get sad when I see people that let me down and I have days where I feel like I want to die. Then I remember that I can’t change everything in one lifetime but I can work on making myself a peaceful presence for others to be around. I am raw-dogging those feelings more than I ever was and that is badass. 

I am also protecting my tender little heart from the assholes that are always going to be there. I am no longer just being a cool party girl to numb myself out of reality. I am letting go of my ego and wanting to be liked. I know I am already lovable –  just not to everyone and that is fine. If giving up on trying to impress everyone and just focusing on myself loses my foot in a door, I am sure another one will open. At least I got my two feet on the ground and I am moving forward. 

Green Goddess Dressing paired with a goodbye to 2022.

I have been on a salad dressing from scratch kick and I can’t go back! For this dressing I tackled the Green Goddess bebee! I’m going into that new year with that green goddess energy! Lol okay anyway, I stole some ideas from multiple recipes and put together my own!

Obviously you can dress it up or down however you want! It will be at the end of this blog post for you if you want that recipe and you’re like, “I Don’t Know This Bitch! I Just want to make a damn dressing!” Then scroll to the bottom! I got you!

Okie dokie! So, I must say goodbye to 2022 in some kind of fashion here. This year was ultra-exhausting! I started off 2022 burnt the fuck out at Planned Parenthood while trying to balance comedy and art. I think I felt the repercussions from 2020 even harder this year. 2020 was this year where everyone’s dreams came to a halt and then we were forced to be in a state of survival. Dreams we’re not lost but also trauma had yet to be processed. Then 2021 came along and we were all just so happy to be out working again but then we realized that the dreams we had either were no longer there and or we were starting all over again. Then of course, 2022 hit hard with inflation, more illness, more political bullshit and war.

I realize now that my personal problem was that I was holding onto what 2020 had taken away from me. It was a harsh lesson to learn but I have come to see that I am simply in a new world. It seems obvious but I was trying to still be this 2020 version of myself in my art and comedy. I was holding onto the gains I had coming my way in 2020 and I was stuck there like trying to fit in some pants from high school. Who gives a fuck about those pants! They aren’t even in style anymore.

It was hard to be back in a comedy scene that is completely different than from what it was before. Comedy scenes are clicky everywhere, but it was like I wasn’t as close with people I was hanging with a ton before and I was also seeing other friendships around the scene dissolve. Then on top of that you’re also embracing all the new faces around the scene. I selfishly felt like I lost my place here and there. I made this vision board in my head that I was going to keep climbing the Denver comedy ladder and then when I was in a good place I could move. But when so many people quit, move, and new people come into a comedy scene like the last three years it demolished this comedy hierarchy that was once there.

I had to really check in with my ego and be like okay we like this though. I have never been one to think there is only one good comedian out there. Comedy is so weird because people will ask you who your favorite comedian is and I don’t think they even realize how common and vast comedy is these days. There are truly so many talented people out there. I have always thought that there is work for everyone like any other job. I know people try to pick favorites for everything, but I could never. There are so many amazing musicians out there, actors, directors, artists. Life would be so boring with just one person steamrolling through everyone else. So, then why did I feel like I was so slighted this year? lol.

I was holding onto an old reality. It was what I thought I had to be but then in this real reality breaking down these barriers are actually a beautiful thing. I have always hated gatekeepers; I still struggle with rejection letters, I am a hardcore FOMO gal but more so within my own town than other cities? (Interesting thought) It seemed like the only outlets and options for me to get the stage time or to be noticed were these kinds of rooms. So, obviously I would get so hurt when someone never booked me but then One day, I was reading Molly Shannon’s autobiography and she tells the reader to work with people who want to work with you. It is something I have heard before, but I don’t know if I truly practiced it. Then I sat down and thought about how much I was focusing on people that never book me that I wasn’t actually present when on shows or hanging out with people that wanted me there.

It was like performing to a really warm room and then there is one table not laughing. I spend the entire time focusing on that table and don’t even realize that it is also affecting my set. lol SO, my therapist noticed a fear of rejection in me. She asked me where I think it came from and I did some digging. It is absolutely from growing up different, just being one of the only lil chubby redheads in my school growing up, I also had ADHD so I was so hyper and wild. I grew up being told to control myself in any way possible. I feel like a lot of kids are told that, especially assigned females at birth. My family also had always expressed how important it was to fit in. It took me a long time to get to a place where I stopped trying to appear to look a certain way for anyone but myself, but I still have this mega people pleaser mindset that I am working on. I am happy to have come closer to healing that part of me.

Of course, that people pleaser part of me wants everyone to like me. I envied people that don’t care how their actions are perceived in the world. It is fun to see sometimes and know like wow that person is shameless! I really wanted to be shameless for a long time which is impossible when you have so much shame (haha). And because of that, I would want to have the approval of these people so I too, could just keep moving forward. For me, this is not sustainable though, I like to communicate and feel comfortable where I am. If I hurt someone, I can feel it and it will keep me up at night. I am lucky that two of my friends that have been stable supportive people in my life lent me a couple amazing books to read this year. I read All About Love by Bell Hooks and Radical Friendship by Kate Johnson.

In these books they talk about how being in a loving community is what gives us a more fulfilling life. That here in America we have gotten away from holding community to a higher standard. The Neopatriarchal family structure has made it a selfish place out there. It made me actually smile because I felt like my heart was so seen. I remember getting in trouble for buying my friend’s lunch at school as a little kid and one day two family members sat me down and said I care too much about my friends. At the time it made me feel embarrassed or bad. But as I age, I have found that friendships have served me some of the richest moments of my life and they are worth getting in trouble for tehe.

I have many friends that feel like family members to me. I feel like your real family consists of the people that want the best for you, accept you for you, and hold space for you when you need someone to listen to you. A lot of people only focus on their own family or a relationship. It is the perfect storm for creating resentment to people around you that may seem different. Over time it makes people so mean! It is why that crazy person you accidentally cut off on the highway followed you home. Having a diverse group of people in your life keeps you young! It keeps you wondering and learning. I love seeing people helping each other out and hanging out.

I also talked with all of these people that I love so much this year about my career and what I am doing. I don’t think I would have been able to just quit my job at my breaking point without the help from family and friends. Many people were so supportive and if I didn’t have that I would have stayed at PP And I would have turned into a lil popped balloon stuck in a tree with no way down! I talked with so many friends who felt like they were starting over too and how they were getting through it and finding ways to bounce back. I talked with friends that helped me remember there are other ways to get your name out there and get work without having to suck any ego head’s dick.

I talked with friends about having thoughts of doubt and quitting and just saying it to people helped me figure out what to do next. It felt good too! To just say the awful thoughts in your head. I also talked with friends who quit comedy or other jobs and how they were really happy. This at least showed me it is okay to take breaks and come back to things. I did the same thing as an artist why not in all other jobs. Saying that I have thoughts of quitting was helpful to also realize that maybe it isn’t the act of performing I wanted to quit. It was all the other bullshit that comes with stand up comedy or any industry. So, it gave me a jump off point to ask myself what can you stop worrying about that you actually have control over to make it easier for you to do what you love? For starters, let’s invest more time in the people that want to work with you and be proud of what you have done.

I also talked with my therapist about friends that I had recently grown apart with and she helped me realize the only person that gets in the way of figuring shit out like a distance that has grown between someone and you, is you! I know people can’t read minds, and also have thousands of distractions going on day to day. It may hurt but either way it will get closure with whatever is going on and I can move forward. It was that fear of rejection that was holding me back again. Ever since then I have been more clear and able to advocate for my soft lil heart.

I also gave in and got a part-time job that I love so far where I am a caregiver for kids with mental disabilities. I have been learning so much and these kids are amazing. It also feels good to have something to combat this new inflation going on. That being said I have figured out what works for me as a new freelance artist performer person. And life feels a little more stable in that sense. I am not burning it at both ends and that also have given me lots of time to organize myself. Life is better when you put more energy into things you can control. In the long run change is for the best and we just have to embrace it.

I am excited to see what comes. I am currently writing to you all from my bed. Brad and I hosted a sold-out Roast of 2022 show at Wide Right last night and it was a magical time. I think part of what was so lovely was all the new talent we got to see on stage that also wanted to be a part of a new silly tradition. It was a great gathering of people to do what we all do best, send off another year talking shit. I am excited to keep learning and not quit anything yet.

HaAaAaAapPpPpYyYy NeEeEeW YEeEeAaAaArRrR

The Slimer (Katie’s Green goddess dressing)

1 cup of plain yogurt. (or you can sub with non dairy yogurt/sour cream, or an avocado)

2 table spoons of apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon of Tahini

1/3 cup of water

1/4 cup of olive oil

1/4 cup of chopped parsley

1/2 cup of chopped green onions

1/4 cup of a sweet onion

1 lemon

3/4 cup of basil

Cilantro (optional) a few pinches is what I put but you can put however much more you want

1/2-1 teaspoon of tarragon

1/2-1 teaspoon of salt

Black pepper to your liking

1 garlic clove

Couple sprinkles of dill

Blend it all up bebee!

Happy New Year!

Bowman

My Carrot Ginger Dressing

I have this crazy hate and love relationships with salads. I just feel like salad dressing from the bottle is trash unless you’re putting it on a pizza or a sandwich and salads are so easy to fuck up but they are so good when you nail it! So I have been experimenting with dressings!

I recently posted this carrot ginger dressing I made on my story and had some DMs on the recipe so I figured it has to go in the blog!

I usually put this on a mix of greens like lettuce, spinach and cabbage. Then I add some cucumbers, red onions and croutons. You can also add a some tomatoes or a chopped bell pepper too.

Dressing ingredients

Ginger- i think the more the better but start with a couple tablespoons of it and you can always add more, i usually put a thumb sized chunk of raw ginger in it.

1.5 cups of carrots or 2 large carrots

1//2 a cup of olive oil

1/4 cup of water

2 tablespoons of sesame seeds or 2 teaspoons of sesame seed oil

1 tablespoon of maple syrup or honey

1 tablespoon of soy sauce

1/2 a teaspoon of salt

1/3 cup of rice vinegar

1 tablespoon of lime juice

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 garlic clove

Half a teaspoon of black pepper

1/2-1 shallot

Blend it all together and you’re ready to go baby!

Much love!

Guts

“When we decide that people’s bodies are wrong because we don’t understand them, we are trying to avoid the discomfort of divesting from an entire body-shame system.”

-Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

Oh hi again,

I am compelled to sit down and write another blog piece because this time two years ago I finally decided to quit lying to myself about a nasty little problem I was running from for years. I have officially been two years eating disorder free.

I did not think I would ever stop so I guess this is a good mile stone. I know I have a lot to say about this shit cause healing is an upward battle and I am back on here again to follow up.

Maybe someone out there is like me two years ago. Maybe that someone else is coming to the end of many years of secretly fasting for days, throwing up good food they paid for, diets, diet pills, working out even when sick. I am sure a lot of you have read every book there is about self help and dieting and health in general. You did it all and now you may be having some side effects from all this and thinking, “but I did everything right! I am so good! Why!?” If this is you just know you’re not alone. And if you’re here for a solidarity read, thanks!

I don’t want to say I have a remedy for what society has influenced us into doing to ourselves. But I do have some feedback on how it feels to leave it all behind. It isn’t all as tantalizing as these diets that got all of our asses over and over but it may be something to look into. I have found it is helpful the more people talk about this as well.

First of all, I am definitely fatter than I have ever been and that is what happens to a lot of bodies that yo-yo diet for years since they were minors and quit dieting. As I have shared previously in my blog about my departure from diet culture, there is a ton of science that backs this up and all my references can be found in that blog 😉

But to recap, your body goes into starvation mode when you start relaxing your diet habits and wants to get you back to your previous weight it was feeling normal at. That is why most fat people gain it all back and sometimes more.

I couldn’t tell you my weight cause I haven’t been looking since maybe a year ago and I do feel a lot better. My bloodwork has been normalizing, and I feel a lot happier/less anxious throughout the days. My lichen planus flare ups are getting more controlled, my thyroid levels are leveled with medication. I exercise to feel good and I think this is the most peaceful I have felt in a long time regarding my body.

I do however feel a lot of jade. Not to worry, I am learning to channel it into art, comedy and whatever else. It is just wild the shit doctors and people of all sizes will say about anyone that is a person of size to their face or even people around them. Body shame is so engrained in all of us. It is enraging when you are just trying to heal.

I have found myself more open than ever about my struggles with all of this because once you read the truth and how a system once again is designed to destroy you, you realize you could never go back to pretending like this dieting and eating disorder life is a good way to live.

It is hard to bite my tongue when someone gets lit up on the subject about obesity and is not in favor of having a compassionate stance. It is a really hard chat to have as well. Like do I need to go over why I am the way I am cause I can feel judgement that is out if ignorance every day? It is all the same conversation. Everyone has a fat uncle that can’t do this or that cause they are what? Too fat. I am always wondering like how close these people really are to this uncle and what the poor person is going through that is the fat uncle.

There is honestly so much to learn and to be said about fatness that I have found I don’t have time to wait for a skinny person to try and gaslight me so they can quote some crazy fat shamey diet book I also probably already read and then still not get it.

The one thing that really annoys me is that it is so obvious that a person of size has read and done every diet culture fix/fad in the book. And not one of these assholes will just go read one of these books challenging the concept that diet culture is good.

The only reason that I can think of is because people want to feel superior? Or maybe they don’t want to believe some of the shit they are doing is not necessary. It’s like people can’t just be okay with the fact that traits are genetically passed down. Sure, you have a kick ass lean body but you may also just be that size naturally. Which is fine!

I wish people could see that by feeding into a culture of shame, they are also feeding into a world that lacks autonomy. It’s truly wild how hard it is to get people to worry about their own problems when it comes to appearance, identity and sexuality! Like mind your own business. If you feel like you’re going into a conversation with the mindset of dunking on someone, I don’t know… Maybe you’re not listening lol.

I feel crazy that I have to remind myself this shit still every day. That it is not always worth it to go down the rabbit hole with people. That is also why I try to make art and write about it.

I still feel like what if I did go back to living that way. And I get all this doubt sometimes. I think about diets lol like ohhh, what if I just did it for a little bit but then I remember I’d just gain it all back and more. I’m too exhausted to care like I did before I started healing. It is grim but also gives me solidarity with my own body and helps me not think about my diet and body 90% of the day which to me is a win.

I get way more work done not worrying like that. I also spend a way more reasonable amount of time working out and my body isn’t exhausted all the time. I feel way more funny and relaxed on stage and in my art. these are all wins. I also did actually seem to level out at the weight I am at currently. There is this irrational fear of overeating but once I let myself have at it all for months, I now can keep ice cream and stuff in my fridge and I don’t just binge it in one sitting along with everything else. Food is food for the first time and that is awesome.

I do get sad and triggered by old photos or when people share before and after photos but then I just remind myself that I am healing, I feel good, and my health is doing a lot better. I also remind myself that others are in whatever state they are in with their bodies and they probably haven’t done the research I have.

I think the old photo whether in a before and after or just my own old photo is this weird reminder of where I was at that time. How much I didn’t feel pretty or confident and it is a damn shame cause I look great in the photos too. Even if I am ugly to anyone why do people even care? Why did I believe that so deeply? I think that is also why the before photo upsets me, a lot of the time it is referring to your past self as not worthy. And I am here to tell you these don’t look that much different a lot of the time and you’re beautiful in both. And on that note, I have learned to love me for me wherever I am on the scale. Even though, I am not weighing in.

I have been having lots of digestive struggles since I used to have bulimia and did a bunch of other terrible things that I thought were weight loss remedies. I had to give up coffee cause it was giving me acid reflex, actually, I had to tone down how spicy and acidic my diet was a bunch. It is funny how your trauma will always find a way to catch up and a lot of the time in a physical way.

When I was still fasting, pushing keto too hard and having bulimia off and on my hair started to fall out, I had ulcers in my mouth from what I now know is an auto immune condition called lichen planus. My back and muscles were knotted the heck up. All of this was happening and I still was like, “can we be skinnier?”

it wasn’t until the Lichen planus diagnosis that I finally was like oh what? My body is mad at me for losing too much weight too fast? Not to mention the fact that I carry a lot of my anxiety in my gut. I never saw it until I started lightly writing jokes about it but I totally get diarrhea when I am about to perform in a certain stressful situation, or just having stress in general and if I have too much caffeine or acidic food I will totally throw up also when anxious. I have been working really hard to get better and I can say it is the best it has been in a while.

I did have the best dental appointment in the last three years this past month. Lol, truly I don’t know if it is because I am on medicaid but they were very positive and didn’t try to sell me shit. It made me realize how much of my stress also played into my doctor’s visits. What a good feeling it is to go to a practitioner that actually cares about your health and isn’t blaming something random on being fat. Or just not having a doctor try to sell me shit is another huge breakthrough.

Lastly, I think having clothes made for my body size is a huge game changer. Imagine if plus size clothing existed for kids back in my day. Lol instead we had the awful 90s and that is why Britney Spears is fat shaming Christina Aguilera. She was without culture for so long she was essentially stuck in the 90s mindset of being the best, the only female and the skinniest female. That poor gal has a lot to catch up on and we all kind of do.

So yeah? I am still learning every day and I think that is okay. It is hard to let go of being perfect. I think working on staying present is helpful to prevent a meltdown.

So I painted this portrait of the digestive system because it is important and I feel like I am finally actually listening to mine. I am staying present by listening to a craving, when I am actually hungry also just listening to fatigue.

The digestive system is this beautiful self healing structure that I distanced myself from for so long in order to fit into what society was telling me to be. I neglected it and put lots of garbage in it. Starved it. Made it regurgitate when it didn’t want to.

I put my guts through a lot and it takes guts to say this (lol) but I am finally feeling more myself than I have in a long time and I just want to keep on spilling my guts to everyone all the time. I don’t want to be all closed off and giving myself diarrhea unless it was a worthy plate of Asian or Mexican food.

Again, not perfect but better than spiraling into bad habits. I hope this was a digestible read for you and that you can also find some peace with yourselves. I gotta stop, I am full of puns. I hope we all can lean in to a new way of leaving behind the shame and actually living in a supportive community where appearance is just a factor that exists. If anyone ever wants a resource, I got them and like I said, there are some great ones in my past blogs and if you hate reading, check out the podcast Maintenance Phase, they do a great job at deconstructing diet culture.

So much love,

Bowman.

Colorful Couscous On The Fly

Hello again!

Here is another lil dish I personally love to make! An old friend showed it to me in college and I have recently shook it up a bit but it goes well with a main entrée or alone! And I am all for convenience so I cook the couscous from a box but get wild with it! The tiny couscous pearls are fun too.

Before we get into it I want to share more about my diet lately. I eat fish, dairy and eggs as my animal proteins for digestive reasons and because I have thyroid disease and lichen planus I have to watch certain foods I eat. Also I will admit, all the books I read about factory farming scared me for life and i feel bad i’m not a vegan even but heyyy, i am doing the best and what is best for my personal health.

So, you may see a focus in plant based/seafood/dairy/eggs. And you can switch or add whatever proteins you want with all these! I hope you enjoy!

This is the brand I typically get! It is nice and quick 🫠👍🏻 And then these are the ingredients you will need!

Ingredients for Recipe

• Couscous

• Roma tomatoes but any tomato is fine

• One yellow onion

• One bunch of kale

• Feta

• Lemon

  one garlic clove

• Mushrooms, any kind.

• Olive oil

• Salt

• Pepper

So, I chop all the veggies separately and throw the onions into a skillet with olive oil and get them to start to turn golden and then I add the kale, mushrooms with salt, pepper, chopped garlic, and lemon in the same skillet and sauté them. Then keep them on low until the couscous is done.

While the veggies are cooking you can prepare the couscous on the side, remember to go easy with salt, the feta is a great salty flavor and if you’re like me and love the couscous from the box then be aware it also has its own seasoning. I love all the different flavors they have! But you can also have a great bulk couscous and use the salt, pepper, lemon and feta combination to as much as you want or as subtle as you want.

Once veggies and couscous are done cooking I add them all together in one bowl, and then add the feta, at least 3/4s cups or less

. And then dice the raw tomatoes and add them all in the same bowl. Stir!

Once it is all done it is ready to serve.

enjoy bebesss!

😘😘😘😘

Salmon Salad recipe

Yes, I am going to start sharing my recipes.

Hey friends if you know me you know I am a cancer and I love food! I love cooking for friends and so many friends have told me I should share what I make with the world so I am going to start sharing recipes on my blog! Enjoy this first recipe, it is my go to power salad and one of my favorite meals to cook for traveling comics and friends staying with me. It is amazing all year!

Ingredients:

1 Potato or handful of fingerlings

1 sweet potato

Salmon

Cauliflower

1 sweet onion

Asparagus

Garlic

Raw spinach

Avocado

Sharp cheddar

Bell pepper

Avocado

Lemon

Salt

Pepper

Dill

Bbq sauce

Sriracha

Turmeric

Chile powder

Sesame seeds

Chopped green onion

Olive oil

Whatever sauce you like for dressing i like tomatillo or fresh mild salsas or green goddess dressing is amazing too.

cook and prep time: Roughly 45 min-1hr

Directions

Set oven to broil

Dice potato and sweet potatoes up and boil them

while they boil you can marinate your salmon with salt pepper lemon garlic dill and a lil bbq and sriracha sauce on it then throw it in the fridge

Then dice up all your veggies

I throw the cauliflower in the oven first, diced nicely with garlic salt pepper turmeric and Chile powder

Then once potato mix is soft i drain it and throw it on a sheet with finely diced onion and bell peppers, i season these with salt, pepper, chile powder, garlic salt or garlic and pepper with olive oil and broil that

Everyone’s broil settings are so different so i just eyeball everything and keep flipping it so they get crispy

once they seem like they have 10-12 minutes left i throw the asparagus in the oven for that time let it cook for 5 min then throw the chopped garlic on it

I also throw the salmon in on broil as well for 12-15 minutes or until it is cooked to your liking

When throwing it all together i chop some raw spinach up and throw it on a plate with some lemon and shaved cheddar then throw the potato hash on it, then the cauliflower, and asparagus and add a lil sliced avocado on there and salmon on top. For garnish you can add some sesame seeds

Cover everything in lemon and whatever dressing you want to flavor it all with and enjoy!!!

<3 Bowman

From One Chapter to Another

A reflection of the last years I spent at Planned Parenthood and in art and comedy.

I started working at Planned Parenthood a little over a year into my comedy career. I got the job through a fellow comedian, Miriam Moreno (Straight up crusher!). As I have previously written in earlier blogs, I was in my mid twenties and was told I should wait to apply to grad school because I wasn’t ready for it per one of my mentors (a mentor that I looked up to the most) which was fair looking back at my old portfolio. On top of that, I was let go from the science museum and was offered such little pay at the art museum I was interning at that I turned down the job offer they gave me. Like really? You’re going to have me do work for a year unpaid and offer me $9 an hour!? No joke! I then went to restaurants and dog walking and was getting pretty tired of that. Especially when the restaurant I worked at put me on call because I picked up the dog walking job to help make ends meet. I was just so broke. I had some help from my parents but they helped me with school so they were like, um? Can you make your own money? Yes, yes I am trying to figure that out. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am privileged for sure and so lucky to have been given the gift of education but on the other side I know so many artists now that never went to college and are doing just fine so it is hard to not wonder how your life would be if you had more time between k-12 and college to see what you actually would want to do. I look back at myself as an 18 year old and now and I am like wow, I had no idea what I wanted. I did somehow find my passion along the way which was comedy and then by taking a break from art to do comedy, I was able to go back to art when I didn’t feel irritated about how fucked up it is to just be an artist in a capitalist society and I was actually enjoying life somewhat again. 

So I was taking a break from taking my art seriously, doing open mic comedy and only walking dogs for my income. I was applying to all sorts of jobs but couldn’t find one. About a year into comedy I had befriended Miriam like I said and she noticed I was struggling and was like, “I can help you get a job at the call center for Planned Parenthood, it doesn’t pay super well but it is a job.” It was still more than I was making! A whole whopping $11.20hr! I took that shit and was forever grateful for a break from the food and dog walking industry. So there I was, an official employee of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains!

I didn’t plan to be at PPRM for six and half years but I was so naive it happened. I truly had thoughts that I would move to New York or Los Angeles for comedy within a few years and *make it* at the time. Obviously that was not the case as many open mic comics come to realize. Getting seen in comedy is so much hard work, I am still working on it too. It is super rare to be on recognizable shows or to have a special less than four years into comedy. I do think however it is easier these days than when I started and before. Not to mention all the people that are born into the entertainment industry or who have rich parents that can fund all their trips and to not be employed while perfecting their craft. That right there is what I wonder if I had found it sooner instead of college, like would I have gotten there sooner? Lol, I wish I had a say but that was the vibe if you have that you go to college so oh well. Not worth wondering about it but I am also happy to have stayed in Denver because Denver does pay for comedy and that is also something that is rare to find in some places until you reach a certain level in your career.

So there it was. I was hired to work full time in the Planned Parenthood call center, I also happened to get hired around the Colorado Springs shootings and it was a crazy time to go through orientation, everyone was a little defeated and triggered but still passionate about the work. I remember all the security and stigma training we got and feeling a little scared but the de-stigmatizing education on abortion and reproductive health was exciting too. I also felt just a tad safer being in the call center to start. 

It was in the call center where I would take all the calls in the world in regards to people’s reproductive needs. Sometimes it was absolutely volatile in how people would treat me on the phone. People would actually say shit like, “if I get pregnant it is your fault!” Or call me names for not having sooner availability. There are only so many PP clinics in a state, people don’t understand we just do not have the funding to have more accessibility and we are trying but boy is the government also trying their best to take us down. I also would get calls from the occasional pro-lifer calling in to pretend to be scheduling something and then they would yell, “you’re a baby killer and you’re all going to hell (hang up).” 

I scheduled hundreds of reproductive appointments. I also had fun with my cubicle friends making the cubes into what we called our womb. We pinned tapestries on the ceiling to fix the fluorescent lighting beating down on us and sometimes you could even cut a dick out of a piece of paper and throw it inside the tapestry to have fun dick shapes above you as you answered calls. It was one of the first jobs where I did feel comforted by the staff around me at a large capacity. We all had to work the day after Trump took office and there was a bunch of food and hugs ready when we got there. Once we all had a moment, we just continued to keep up the work. I will never forget the broad spectrum of feels one would be sharing with me while scheduling an abortion. Some people had no problem and for some it was the scariest thing they had ever done for themselves, this speaks so much to how abortion is such a personal decision for each individual person.

The call center was not sustainable nonetheless. It didn’t pay a lot and there would sometimes be sixty people in the queue waiting to be answered. I even developed a cyst around my ear that had to be injected to heal from wearing my headset too long lol! No joke, there were days management would ask us to skip our lunch for pizza to take calls. It was kind of becoming a hell and I was over it so I almost made it a year and then after eleven months of insanity with a hint of awesome feminist culture I decided I should just transfer to the health center, I would make a couple more bucks anyway. 

I transferred to the Arvada Planned Parenthood clinic in the late of 2016. Upon working there I was super pumped but also terrified. Don’t get me wrong I was always here for the cause but learning phlebotomy and injections? When I had a BFA in art? Lol stop. But I did it. I still can’t explain how we are legally allowed to administer certain things like that under another provider’s license but PP was all about cutting corners so they figured that out and I assume that is so they didn’t have to pay us more. In other places one would need specific licensing to work but hey, it was cool and felt punk rock so I wasn’t complaining. If you ever get a chance to read A Story Called Jane, women were definitely learning abortion care through the grapevine back in the day and if they could get as far as they did, call me a phlebotomist.

I had no problem learning injections, but blood draws were another story. I hated them! I dreaded them, and I just could not get over the idea of causing someone else pain. Also people treat phlebotomists like shit, they’re all, “I hope you’re better than the last person.” COOL, so now I feel like I am going to not miss your vein at all! I would mess up so many blood draws I would cry. It wasn’t until I also happened to have a suicidal episode from the stress of this job, comedy and other things I was dealing with that led me to got put on zoloft that I finally felt capable of addressing that maybe my training was really bad and I just needed another training session with one of the clinicians. Our phlebotomy training was in a big group and if you didn’t want to be poked you didn’t have to and I don’t care about being poked but my training partners did lol so I didn’t get the best experience. After retraining and a lil anti anxiety/depression medication fix I was like the best in the clinic. No joke, everyone would ask me to do their draws if they failed. It became a game I can’t explain. If a patient had tough veins I was ready for it. 

Explaining sexual education and birth control to patients was one of my favorite things to do. Another game for me even, “Let’s try to win this person over and get them to leave empowered not scared.” I wanted to de-stigmatize reproductive health as much as I could. I will even share some common knowledge right here right now. Most people will have at least one STD before they die. Herpes is super common and non-life threatening, there is also a drug that suppresses outbreaks by 97%. The reason HIV, chlamydia and gonnorhea are considered routine is cause anyone sexually active is at risk for them and they can go a while without symptoms. Most STDs are manageable if not curable these days. You go to get tested to gain control, not lose it. See, so good. 

Abortion care was the same feel for me. I wanted to make every patient feel as in control as possible. No judgment, no reasons just that we trust your decision and we are here for you. Abortion work is so meaningful in so many ways. So many different people needed abortions out there for different reasons and all of them are good reasons and all of them don’t need to explain themselves to anyone. It was painful to see how hard some would beat themselves up over it. It would kill me to see how some partners and family would take it and judge them though there were tons of supportive ones out there too. It all boils down to a lack of education for instance some patients partners even thought that plan B was an abortion when it actually is a pill that causes a blockage so sperm cannot get in and fertilize. Because of this I just reminded myself that we were there to get them back to where they needed to be and make them feel as comfortable and supported as ever as well as give them the best education possible. 

It really upsets me that Roe vs. Wade is on the table again. I never understood why anyone cares about what someone else does with their body. Even if abortion isn’t for you then that is your choice. Abortion is also safer than child birth, let that sink in. It is just crazy to me we value the unborn over the living. The amount of times I have had people tell me their views on it and not just say “it’s a person’s own choice.” You are either pro-choice or you aren’t. Anything else is judgment. People with uteruses can get pregnant on any birth control method, they can do everything right and still get pregnant and not want to be. Of course there will always be people who get pregnant more than once and don’t want it. I don’t need to go into all the political words we are all seeing everywhere cause I am sure everyone has heard the same argument but at the end of the day it is nobody’s choice but the one carrying the pregnancy. It is insane how racist and corrupt it is to oppress that choice. Did you know that back in the day when Janes were still performing illegal abortions and a patient had something go wrong they would have to send them to the ER and in the ER simple procedures to stop hemorrhaging or perforation would end with the provider performing a full hysterectomy on the patients, yup so cruel. This primarily was the case for people of color and it has been proven that most failed abortions are fixable to a point where someone can keep their uterus but these providers were the ones playing God in my opinion. How dare you take someone’s uterus to try and teach them some corrupt lesson. Rich white people will always have access and I truly don’t know what these dumb politicians think they are doing by taking away abortion, birth control and human rights but then also not paying people enough to live or take care of these pregnancies. This country is just trash. What is even crazier is that these anti’s come in to be seen with us all the time! Yup! Anti’s come into PP clinics all the time and scold us for existing yet they get their depo shot from us. I just can’t.

Aside from all the stigma we battle we still kept a tight clinic. Arvada had the least turnover rate in the agency and I truly believe it is because of my Boss, Denise and the two amazing assistant managers I had, Skylar and Gilly. These gems did so much work to make work as comfortable as possible. I had no idea until Covid hit how good our clinic had it. When Covid hit I had to float at other clinics and see how some of the management treated their staff. Planned Parenthood is amazing in many ways but as are most things in life, it is also very flawed but the Arvada management team really put their all into us. Denise would never decline a vacation day, she would always figure it out. She wanted to make the environment of the clinic familial and fun. She had a calendar for everyone’s birthdays, she would jump in flow and actually take charts. If we were having a hard day Denise would make a run to the grocery store and buy us snacks to help ease the stress. She always urged us to take breaks and took that time to make sure we had a community. Denise and the rest of the staff at Arvada were why I stayed there for so long. 

If I were to ever get another day job which I still don’t know, I think it is going to be so weird working in a place where we aren’t all talking about penises, vaginas and anal all day. For knowing and practicing sexual harrassment trainings you would think we all were crossing a line sometimes but it was pure love. TMI was an unknown acronym in the world of PP and that was the most fun. I always thought it was hilarious when patients would even say, TMI! Cause it is like, DUDE. Look where you are (the most open place ever). Patients would tell clinicians they feel bad they have to be inside their vagina and it’s like, Girl! You are one out of a thousand vaginas don’t worry! I have heard so many wild stories and I still giggle about some cause I have nothing but compassion for what people are going through in this country. This country makes sexual health taboo and hates people with uteruses especially. People come in so freaked out they sometimes don’t even remember what we talked about in previous visits. It just says a lot. It makes me sad that people are scared to even come in for an infection because nobody is out here trying to get an STD, we are all just doing our best. We need compassion not judgment. 

Going back to how I was saying PP isn’t perfect. I do have a lot to say. This is also why I am leaving. Over the years I have seen PP let go staff that didn’t deserve it due to their own negligence on licensing, I have heard of some employees that were apparently health center managers using people’s pronouns wrong on purpose, even using dead names at times. I am sure they were let go but how did they get in is the question. I have seen microaggressions against my POC peers. I know a handful of friends that left PP because of racist microaggressions and remarks, assumptions and poor management. Also, PP was so quick to endorse Hilary Clinton but they took forever to endorse Black Lives Matter? 

 I know a lot of people that have left who also would have been amazing managers of clinics but PP decided to hire outside people instead of inside employees working hard to climb the ladder and that is 100% their loss. PP like most non-profits overworks everyone. The schedules are constructed to make PP as much money as possible and not give time for actual patient experience. They expect clinics to see six patients an hour and they refuse to give us a liveable wage when the CEO of PPRM is making a 300,000 income. Not to mention the ask for more and more from employees for expectations with absolutely no raise. I remember they set up training for my clinic and made it sound so cool, they told us we “get” to give positive HIV results but you guessed it. Not one penny of a raise or a resource to accommodate the second hand trauma we endure for results like that or any of the other traumas we experienced. It would feel like constant new training with expectations and no raises. 

The second hand trauma you endure at PP is no joke. It is definitely eye opening too. I always believed the statistic that the victim is statistically always right.. Well after working at PP I am mostly always going to believe it. I have seen and heard so many traumas from people it is truly heartbreaking. Most of the abuse reports you hear tend to be current or past minor abuse. The worst part is hearing how often the court system would do shit for these people. A lot of the time when the victims get police involved they will come visit them at their home and ask a bunch of questions in front of the abuser and then they LEAVE the victim with the abuser. You want to help but you just can’t at a certain level and that is frustrating. It really wore me down and hardened me as a person and then I couldn’t even help myself for most of it cause I was making such little money. Like I said I started at PP making $11.20hr and I am leaving under $20hr and I have been working there for six and half years.  

My life for the last six and half years has consisted of working around forty hours a week at my day job. And probably another thirty-ish making art and doing comedy. When I was in my 20s I was like, “I CAN DO THIS FOREVER, I WILL LIVE FOREVER!” But I am almost 32 now and boy am I tired. I am so fatigued from this work I have just been a ball of anxiety. I have been spiraling for so long I can’t remember but I think it all took a big turn for the worse shortly after I ended a very traumatic living situation, PP health center staff organized a union and several months later and then Covid-19 broke out and that was when we really saw how PPRM Admin felt about its health center staff and our retention. 

In the beginning of the pandemic I thought I should quit but then what? My partner, Brad also lost his job, we both lost comedy and obviously nobody was going to be buying my art when most of the country is unemployed too. I was just starting to really sell art and headline shows more but BOOM, everything was canceled. I told myself to get through the pandemic and then I can quit. Well it was wild when everything started shutting down, we were told we can’t wear masks and if we have them to give them to hospitals, we had to either lay off, or be put into a pool of the only employees working still and then our schedules were completely mixed up due to a shortage across the agency and we were being told to go all over Colorado to help with staffing issues. We never got any financial assistance or updated sick time to help with the conditions we were working in until a year or so into the pandemic. It was awful and scary. 

Then when things were getting better they made us all bid on our schedules so we didn’t have any say in them and they no longer started hiring part-time. Only full-time ten hour shifts which is so hard for some people. I for one have two whole other jobs! Hello!? It was almost like the union and then the pandemic made admin more selfish. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t work face-to-face so much like most of this country at that time. So, it is easy to shout orders from your couch when you aren’t in the clinic actually facing the obstacles we were enduring. We were putting ourselves at risk every day, we also had so many patients and had to do appointments over the phone from the car. It was a mess. 

I know we need a silver lining here so here it is. The stress we endured was so tough I think it actually brought everyone working in the clinics closer together in many ways. Since we didn’t have a home center during those times really the whole PPRM healthcare staff were getting to meet and greet while providing as best of patient care as possible and for that I feel very lucky. It was getting to meet so many different people in the staff and even the patients I was able to learn much more about myself as a person as well. 

I have been joking lately that working at Planned Parenthood and being a comedian for so long will absolutely turn you gay but it is true for me and here is why. I have learned so much about so many people’s sexuality and relationships and how they fuck and they love and it has helped me open my mind to so much more. I don’t know where I would be without the trainings about gender affirming care, sexuality, racism, sexual harrasment and also learning the lives and traumas patients have gone through. 

Comedy is crazy and I honestly feel like a lot of the straight men in comedy will let you down even the good ones at times. They all say they are going to do better and book a show with all the women and then they book the same five women over and over. This isn’t great cause it also makes women feel like they are working against each other and comedy is already so competitive. Meanwhile they book every man that has a new tight ten minutes. There is also a lot of grooming behavior with new women in the scene. I was once groomed in ways, I have had many male friends in comedy that I thought were friends fade away from me and I can only assume that maybe they were friendly because they wanted something from me or they liked me. There are also a ton of dudes that will never book me despite the credits I have, it's crazy producing shows cause you really never know who likes you and as a producer myself I try to book everyone that has good comedy and that isn’t always the same for other shows. A lot of men also still follow the old booking rules like only one woman per show and women can’t go back to back in a line up etc. It is very discouraging and not to mention all the sexual harrassment and condescending bullshit that happens. There are many men in comedy that have done awful things and their careers are never affected by it, if anything it makes their careers stronger. Literally look at any famous male comic that has allegations against them, they are all still touring. A lot of men have also even said shit like “it is easier for women now to get booked on festivals than men.” That just isn’t even true, there are just less spots to be filled because festivals are getting called out to have more women, queer, and POC comics. Those spots should have been there in the first place and now competition is just getting more equal across the board. I get insecure when some of these guys don’t book me but then I remind myself that I am hearing the laughs and getting booked with people that see me and like me and that is more meaningful than crazy gatekeeper shows. I will never be the type to beg for someone to book me, you either like me or don’t. So yes, interactions with straight men haven’t always been great in my comedy career.

Over the years of working in a reproductive health clinic I see the worst in straight people, and sorry but us whites are not looking great guys. I don’t know what it is but I remember reading in a Bell Hooks novel that assigned males and assigned females lie in different ways. AFABs will lie to protect themselves and AMABS will lie to have control. I feel that this is true in many ways, obviously there is always an outlier but I cannot tell you how many straight men, mostly white straight men, were cheating on their partners and just keeping it a secret. It is disheartening! Yes, there were straight women cheating but still just way less than the amount of men coming in for it and whenever a woman was cheating they were terrified. Some women were even assaulted and didn’t want to tell their partner because they didn’t think they would believe them. Women would always cry and be scared whereas the men would tell us they cheated on their wife and wanted antibiotics so they would be “good” for their family vacation. A lot of cismen would answer how many partners they have had in twelve months they would still say one after disclosing they were cheating. Sorry dudes but any penetration counts. The amount of dudes trying to hide it from their partners vs. women is insanely high and disappointing. 

I was single when I first started working there and at the time I was trying to date women but I also was scared and felt very blind to dating women. Not one woman would respond to me on dating apps and then I was freaking out worrying about getting chlamydia from just working and seeing how high it is. I was almost completely done with dating but especially dating men and then I just met Brad. Brad was different from any man I have ever met but even he had never been tested. I told him if he didn’t get tested then we were going to break up and he went and got a full panel the next day and apologized fully. So then I was wondering if maybe I was just straight? But maybe I was also just giving up completely cause it was hard. But then over the years I just kept meeting more and more queer people and listening to their stories of how they live was inspiring. I went to my friend Leah’s birthday a year in to Brad and I dating and this really hot woman asked if I wanted to make out and I said that I hadn’t talked about if that is cool with my boyfriend. I then just was too afraid to bring it up and was just confused about my feelings.

 It took meeting a coworker years later and having a crush on them to realize that I needed to talk with Brad. Turns out it opened up our relationship in ways I had never seen us heading and we came to a comfort that we have been dating for years, maybe it is okay if he some day hooked up with a chuckle fucker (lol) or just a person and he was very understanding and cool about me exploring my sexuality as well. I wouldn’t have been able to get this far in my own developments if I didn’t have the experience of working at PP and having an amazing network of queer friends that helped me understands my own sexuality and gender better. 

I have learned so much since when I had started, I noticed that I rarely had queer couples coming in because another one cheated and if they did they were so open and vulnerable about it. There was no stigma in their relationship as there was in the straight ones. So many times I have had straight women come into the clinic crying and telling me it was because they had a positive HPV test and their husband called them a Goddamn whore. I am sorry but you called your wife a whore for HPV? You’re a fucking loser (I Swear). There was such a lack of education among straights which of course lead to aggressive and scary instances among couples. But queer people have a community that shares and cares. It is one of the purest loves I have ever seen and I am so happy to be a part of it, sometimes I feel like a little virgin again when I flirt with AFABs. It is insane and intimidating but I am here for it and I like to think I wouldn’t have gotten this far with my self growth if I didn’t work at Planned Parenthood and was not a comedian. 

I have learned so much at PP it is crazy to think of life without it. I got comfortable with the trauma I was constantly exposing myself to as well. I started to become hardened and numbed eventually from fatigue and I started to dream about quitting. I envied all my friends that made more money for doing so much less-exhausting work. Not saying it isn’t hard work but we just work so damn hard and I see job offers for similar jobs like mine going for way more money than us. I started to feel myself getting jaded and under appreciated. PPRM admin loved to send the clinic food but a liveable wage was never an option and because of this I think PPRM will continue to suffer. I would have stayed if the conditions were better but they just got worse. The original training program for new health center staff had a six month learning curve and now it is like three weeks. They are forcing new staff to take charts so quickly and it feels sketch AF. But that is also all about the cutting of corners. 

This country is a huge part of this, sure but a lot of things could change within the health centers. I can’t imagine being one of the providers that works for PP. They are truly angels for the work they do because they could make so much more money elsewhere but they stay. They stay because they are passionate about the cause. This work is their life. Some of the clinicians I have worked with have been affiliated with PP for over decades and yet they are given the harshest schedules with unrealistic goals and so much more. This absolutely affects the patient care and staff’s energy. Any time a clinician would snap at me I would have to remind myself that they are also being given such a thankless task every day. They are fatigued as well and this is their passion. Can you imagine having a bunch of new health center assistants also working under your license? It reminded me that I am an artist and a comedian but not a clinician. I truly have no desire for a healthcare job aside from all the awesome experience I have. I will forever be grateful for the experiences and education. I will continue to speak on reproductive health care needs and fight the good fight but I am not made for this work forever. 

 There are so many barriers between a patient and their provider. They have the pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and money all going against them. Certain governments within the US are against actual health in general right now. I can’t even believe this has lead to us having so many people that are anti-vax,anti gender-affirming care and anti-abortion when there is science literally proving it is all great stuff and we should learn even more and see where it will take us. We have come so far with healthcare in the world and it feels like it is all getting ripped away from the government and the providers are the only connection we have to this. I am terrified for everyone. So many of these people got in this line of work to help and yet they are given none of the tools to do the work they want as health professionals. Not to mention all the misinformation going around on social media now. These people deserve daily massages and first class seating for the rest of their lives! And that is why I also can’t stay at PP. I just can’t handle the second hand trauma of it all any more. 

Aside from the fatigue and second hand trauma there are many funny crazy things that would happen. Some favorite memories I have are calling the tow trucks on protestors trespassing. How poorly people were at leaving urine samples, one time a person left the clean catch towelette inside their urine cup and just peed on top of it. I once was so bored that I tried to draw my own blood and I was successful. Learning how to do CPR to the song, Sexyback. Getting so overworked we can’t form words and just laughing at how tired we were. Going through the elections, protests and pandemic together so blindly. When a man called in saying, “hi! My son is in there and my girlfriend is about to kill him,” referring to their partner getting an abortion and I was able to say, “sorry, if you are not scheduling yourself an appointment for screening or other services, I have to end the call.” Getting to perform stand up comedy for the entire agency. And lastly, the time I accidentally farted loudly at the front desk.

The knowledge and confidence that I have gained working at PP bleeds into my art and comedy with a fiery passion and that will always be with me but like I said I am just exhausted. I can’t be trying to kill myself for a day job. So, in the last couple of months I started to make the most from art and comedy than I ever have. It feels like at least I will be able to continue to grow my small business and I will have actual time for me. I put in six and a half years at Planned Parenthood and I am finally pulling out to follow my dreams (see what I did there?) It has been real, to all the people I have worked with and bonded with over the last years, I love you all. If you are reading this and still working at PP or going to work for PP keep fighting the good fight. Don’t let admin abuse your rights, the work within the health centers is amazing work and we are the ones that carry this business. Never let them forget that. 

As I sign off from writing this blog I am on my last day at Planned Parenthood. I had my monthly show last night at Call to Arms Brewing Company and a bunch of my coworkers came out and I was just so taken by all the support. Tomorrow, I fly to Seattle to do some shows, one of which I am headlining and I have more and more shows lined up that I get to close out this summer. I am selling more art and building my business. I was scared and sad when I put in my two weeks but now I am feeling like I am about to grow as an artist in ways I have never been able to. I am excited to be able to go support more shows and get out on the road. I am going to hit all the mics and bury the open micers. Yes, I still hit mics, I want to be the best I can be. If you got this far, thank you for reading and please keep up with my journey on social media and support The Curly Bush and my podcast! Until the next time I write another blog, take care. 

Bowman 💕

Finding Body Solidarity and Why I am done with Diet Culture

It has been five months since I stopped partaking in any type of dieting. Even those diets that are lifestyle changes like intermittent fasting or cutting out specific foods and drinks (aside for ethical reasons obviously). I was a yo-yo dieter for most of my life. I have had what seems like every eating disorder and I have been all the weights if we start from birth ;). After thirty years of being some kind of outcast whether it was my weight, my hair, my vagina or my love for spooky, weird eccentricities I finally feel like I am living in my own body and I am the one making the calls for it, baby!

Last fall I was stoned on a day off and going through all my snacks and posting pictures of them to my Instagram requesting that viewers send me back their favorite “healthy snacks.” Emily Mrozinkski, host of the Wellscape Podcast, messaged me back saying she loved the snack I posted but also to try to refrain from labeling my foods “healthy” as it encourages bad eating habits and I should check out the book, Just Eat It, by Laura Thomas. I never thought of the act of labeling foods as good or bad to be a negative effect on the body so I was immediately intrigued. After that I was on a fat-positive, body-positive, body-solidarity journey and I will never come home! 

I am writing this blog piece because I feel that this information should be common knowledge. I was heavily inspired by Virgie Tovar’s book, You Have the Right to Remain Fat, and I want to also share my personal experience. I am not surprised that diet culture is not perceived as a scam in a country where we think racism and misogyny are over and nobody is having sex before marriage! Not to mention that we also think sexuality and gender are a choice but not abortion! So, I believe it is our job as the people to keep telling our stories and pushing for a better country to live in.

  Fat shaming and fat phobia are a form of bigotry. In Tovar’s book she writes, “Dieting is a practice of fatphobia.” Dieting is the result of unresolved fatphobia. We become terrified of what it would mean for us to be fat because we understand fundamentally how poorly fat people are treated. “We transpose that bigotry onto the fat itself, rather than placing the blame where it belongs: on the culture that created and promotes injustice and fat hatred. We thereby, perhaps unintentionally, end up blaming fat people for the bigotry they are experiencing. Even though fatphobia is culturally pervasive and treated as if it’s a totally normal part of everyday life, it’s important to recognize that it is a form of bigotry that really harms people and that must be eradicated (3.Tovar).”

  I am ashamed to say that I too, was once also a person that has diet shamed, self harmed, and projected diet culture onto people. Just because I wasn’t sitting there calling others terrible names like my peers did to me doesn’t mean I didn’t project diet culture based values onto people. Our culture makes us this way. This is also why I had to cut ties with people in my life that don’t have the same core values as me. If you think any form of bigotry is okay then you are a threat to society and we can’t agree to disagree on that. You are delaying the train of progression and I have no time for that.

  I remember an old friend once called me to catch up and as we were catching up I told her about the book I had just finished that was fucking amazing. The actress that wrote the book happened to be a person of size and as soon as I said, “Oh my God you have to read this it was so good!” This friend replied, “Okay, Katie but she is like morbidly obese, she needs help.” I remember being so shocked and then having another thought like “What does that have to do with her experiences and career?” This is the exact problem. When we fat shame or any type of shaming on personal appearance it also encourages the belief that fat equals uneducated. People should be able to be just as valued as others whether or not they are of size or have any other trait that makes them a minority end of story. Not to mention the misogyny that goes in hand with this kind of discrimination can be heavily put on women and especially women of color or women that live in poverty. Women are constantly told in society to take up as least space as possible, and that if we aren’t a certain body type or have traditional hair and make up that we aren’t worthy of certain jobs. Women of size are also pressured with narratives that they aren’t pretty enough to be loved etc. Hence my dumb ex-friend overriding my statement that the professional actress that is grossing millions more money than my ex-friend will ever make is still too big to be a respected member of society. This has got to end and I am going to just shed some education on this subject as well as tell my personal experience relating to fat shame. 

Laura Thomas PhD says in her book, Just Eat It, that dieting causes the body to go into starvation mode which tells the body to hold onto energy and retain weight and thus GAIN MORE WEIGHT OVER TIME THAN IS LOST. YUP, which explains why I always go back to the same weight or heavier whenever I have fallen off any dieting or fasting. Every book I have read about metabolism and dieting has said this (highly recommend reading these and they are listed below for resources). Even if the body breaks through starvation mode and loses weight it still can cause the body to go into a state of shock causing side effects like autoimmune disorders, depression, hair loss, fatigue, heart issues and more. These are also all things that people identifying as skinny suffer from all the time already! Thomas also made a very impactful statement that if you are thinking about what you are going to eat, it will affect your body for 90% of your day you probably have an eating disorder. She then follows up that statement with another fact that the diet industry profits off people failing diets all the time and wants you to keep spending money on it so that they keep feeding their billion dollar industry. Diet culture drip-feeds pictures and ads into all of your apps and inspires influencers to constantly share content that is only forcing you to compare yourself to millions of people that are also probably not health professionals in any way. This is why you should also check sources from people like this when you decide to cut shit out of your diet. And finally she leaves the reader to ask one’s self to imagine what one could do if they were not thinking about food and actively dieting all the time. This was huge for me. Because of years of shame and yo yo dieting food ran my life.

Before I move onto more of my rant I also would like to share some quotes from Caroline Dooner’s book, The Fuck It Diet. She writes:

“ You are not a robot or a machine. Your feeling system does not work like a machine. You are significantly more complicated than that, and your metabolism has evolved to slow down when you are not consuming enough. That means that calorie calculations are rendered totally moot and pointless when you understand that your  metabolism is adjusting itself to purposely keep on weight when it senses restrictions. 

Your body is trying to conserve energy and also trying to get you to eat. So, restriction of any kind will cause you to fixate on food, be hungrier, more tired, and put on weight quicker- all to save your life. Those symptoms are often signs of a slow metabolism.”

Dooner and Thomas also touch base on BMI in their books. I know a lot of us know that BMI isn’t accurate but did you know why? BMI was created by an insurance company in 1959 as a way of explaining their rates. It was heavily criticized by scientists and still is! Doctors and Insurance companies still use it because it just simplifies their work. In 1998 the World Health Organization relied on the International Obesity Task Force to create updated BMI recommendations which we’re primarily funded by pharmaceutical and insurance companies that literally only have weight loss drugs on the market at this time. So all together the BMI cutoffs got randomly trained and more than half of America’s population went from the term Normal Weight to overweight. Donner wrote, “The whole thing is arbitrary, because many studies have found that higher BMIs actually have lower mortality rates. And Many studies have shown that weight loss or too much exercise has been associated with poorer health, higher stress hormones, and increased mortality.” This also explains why my vitals, bloodwork and thyroid have all been stable for years because I actually do eat a balanced diet and workout a lot. I struggle to get down to some crazy size because my body probably is comfortable at a heavier weight. This never seemed to be even an option to me. 

I spent my entire life being raised by parents offering me money to lose weight, talking about that day I would be skinny, telling me there is a skinny girl inside of me etc. Friends and family would also tell me things like “You would be so pretty if you just lost a little weight.” Then there were the occasional bullies throughout life that fat shamed me with terrible names. It has been to the point where bullying in general just numbs me now. Everyone always makes it seem like being skinny is going to solve all my problems when in reality my skinny friends also have their own struggles with how they are perceived by cis-men.

  Another struggle that should be addressed is how mothers pass down these self hating thoughts to their kids. I don’t want to say that they know what they are doing. Chill out moms, this is a societal pressure that has been put on women for years but statements like, “I just can’t lose any weight, I look terrible! Don’t post that photo of me! We didn’t have to eat this, Nobody wants to see my ugly old lady body.” Those statements are absorbed by the young minds you are raising and the kids see themselves in you so thus they start behaving in a manner that supports the negative results of dieting and disordered eating. To be frank we are all tired of anyone shaming themselves publicly in a world that has so much more devastating news that needs to be addressed and worried about. You may not be able to lose five pounds but hey! At least you aren’t a child in a cage or being shot down by an officer or a sad little polar bear just trying to live at all. 

Sonya Renee Taylor taught me this and writes in her book, The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love, “The United States has had only one woman of color serve as governor and one lesbian woman. All the other intersections of identity… zero. This country is not an anomaly in its history of centralizing political power toward a very specific sort of body; most nations have a default body in their government structures. Although social and cultural realities may shift what those bodies look like, using default bodies to establish a social hierarchy and distribute power and resources is a global phenomenon. The statistics above illustrate an irrefutable truth: body shame and oppression are both symptoms of and tools in a far more complex and sweeping system of access and resources. A system that impacts not only how we feel about ourselves but also our opportunities and ability to thrive in the world. There is a reason we hate our bodies, and it isn’t because of Curtis, our mamas, or even our low self-esteem. We are saddled with body shame because it is an age-old system whose roots and pockets are deep. Body shame flourishes in our world because profit and power depend on it.”

I have firm memories of my mother throwing out *fattening snacks* and her telling us she was saving us. Saving us from what? My dad’s genes. My mom was a tiny polish woman from Philly as are all the women in her family and my dad was a big dude as was his sister and everyone would always tell me I look like him. I never understood the resemblance as a kid, I would constantly be saddened because at the same time I was also getting called fat and fire crotch at school and so here was another cool trait to add to the mix. Great! I look like an old man. 

My parents have told me they think I am pretty but they also have always hinted at the idea of losing weight and never shied away from telling me when I gain weight. Or never shied away from saying that I don’t HAVE to finish my Chipotle burrito. Like I said I would get offered $1000 to lose weight and then I would get all the clothes I dreamt of and life would be better. I spent so many days at the gym on the elliptical forever just thinking it would all just fall off. Losing weight when you are already a chubby person genetically is already hard but this country believes that all this can be fixed so easily. The truth is that a lot of the way people look is genetic or their lives are structured around workouts and planned meals with a nutritionist. Not to mention the fact that a lot of people put themselves through gastric bypass and plastic surgeries to obtain weight goals. 

Yes, a lot of people have lost a ton of weight on shows like the Biggest Loser, or in studies where people cut stuff out of their diets, not eating but what is not mentioned is that these are all done in conditions that are forcing the body to go through intense starvation and over exertion. Sure people can all get down to a pant size that sounds nice but you can still die from all the health issues you are causing from stressing your body the fuck out. 

I cannot tell you how many times I have done this to myself and the best part about it is because I am still over 200 lbs, people don’t even believe me. When I tell even my friends or mother I had eating disorders my whole life they scoff and say shit like, “YOU were anorexic?” love that, really I do. A great example of this is when intermittent fasting and keto came out my doctor told me that it was new but a lot of people have been losing weight so why not try it. I started doing the fasting and I read the book, The Obesity Code by Jason Fung which has great evidence that fasting can cause weight loss and fats are good for you but he mostly focuses on the idea of eating when one is hungry. So I, having years of disordered eating, took it to the next level and overdid it. I was shocked that I actually never felt hunger, which actually also can be bad. Then my ex friend I talked about previously at the time expressed that she too was doing IF and Keto. My friend became my weight loss partner but in reality we ended up inspiring each other to go days without eating. I am not kidding, I literally went five days without eating. I do remember weighing myself and seeing that I lost a pound after all of that and boy is that worth all of that. 

I still kept on going and took keto to the next level. My entire meals were mostly spinach and fats and I started losing way more weight and really fast. Probably also because I was fasting and only eating fats. So as I was losing a ton of weight I also was losing a ton of hair and my complexion was very faded. Finally, I scored the highest score of getting an outbreak of sores and ulcers in my mouth for six months only to find out after going to three dentists and an oral surgeon where she biopsied my mouth and found out because I have been starving myself and dropping so much weight my body already having thyroid disease thought I was attacking myself so it started attack me with an autoimmune disorder called, Lichen Planus. I was pissed. 

All along while doing these years of yo yo dieting, being anorexic and bulimic and whenever I would lose some weight, telling my friends shit like “I just work out and eat fats!” My thyroid actually stayed in perfect range somehow. I never questioned the thought that hey! your thyroid is fine, maybe you are meant to be heavier and maybe your body is turning on you because you are freaking it the fuck out and maybe you should just try to eat all the foods and relax. Maybe don’t still run four miles when you throw out your back so bad your arm goes numb in a plank. 

I never had these thoughts because everyone around me and all my health professionals just assume that everyone wants to be skinny. When you say you lose weight most people say, Yay! I cannot even imagine the horror stories that my friends have endured that are just a bit fatter than me who were turned away from their doctors for being fat when they had a UTI or an ear infection. 

Another great bit of information that Laura Thomas shares is that as much as a doctor is labeled as the end all be all of medical education they still are usually focused somewhere. A lot of primary doctors aren’t actually nutritionists and so you are absolutely better off going to an actual nutritionist than someone that checks your body for cancer lumps. Who would have thought? One time I got a pap from my PCP and she looked at my cervix and stated, “Katherine, you are going to need a colposcopy and you have a polyp.” I am lucky enough to work at Planned Parenthood to think it is strange to say that before even sending out the lab and also since my last pap was normal. I decided to go have my lovely coworker check it all out and she said I did not have a polyp, it was a Nabothian Cyst which is 100% normal and that my cervix looked fine.  So we waited for the pap result for her to call the shots for me and it came back normal. When I sent the records to that Doctor she never even responded. I am sure she just never does Pap smears that often because she is a PRIMARY CARE DOCTOR but still this is why there are specialists and if you are as confused from dieting and nutrition as I am you probably know damn well that a nutritionist would do us better with our diets. No wonder a ton of doctors are eating their words for encouraging keto now from all the bad side effects. Doctors are human and fuck up just like us. And if they tell you that you are too fat and you need to lose weight before they can feel for any possible signs of cancer you can swear them right off and report them for malpractice. It is their job to do better and figure that kind of shit out. 

There are testimonies all over the internet about people that were turned away for being fat when they truly needed a cancer diagnosis and doesn’t this all boil down to the fact that everyone that fat shames literally says, “It’s cause I care.” Bullshit! You are projecting your own fears and hate onto people that are just doing their best. Also now learning all the information I most recently have given you do you feel like you are helping? I really don’t understand why fat shaming just continues to slide under the radar but it has to stop. I am so sick of people even just getting uncomfortable when I talk about my body image jokes because they couldn’t fathom even being in my body but also it just reads how taboo we have made body image. Saying I am fat is a dumb adjective describing my appearance. It is not saying that I am an idiot or some pedophile rapist stop trying to sugarcoat shit. We need to also stop saying shit like, “OMG YOU ARE NOT FAT,” let people talk to you about how they identify. It reminds me of when I see this employee that has down syndrome at my local grocer and all the older white ladies go up to them and say shit like, “I want you to know you are doing a good job, you are amazing.” Dude! They are an active person in society holding a job! They don’t need any of your input and you are doing that again because you pity them and it makes YOU feel good. You know what feels good? people respecting people’s boundaries, acknowledging others appearances and treating them like any other person you see out and about.

I think if we all could start recognizing that bodies are just built differently and that it needs to be respected we would be in a world of compassion and empathy which absolutely would feel better than where we are now? We never just express our truths and put on a “I am fine and I am awesome” wall which doesn’t help anyone. I think about the times I would throw up expensive food that I didn’t think I deserved and the times I didn’t eat. I think about the times I would always just hook up with a guy even if he didn’t have a condom cause I never thought guys would like all of this. I think about my rape and how I never went public because I also just didn’t think anyone would believe me and because by being too fucked up I was asking for it. I think about wearing dumb tank top swimsuits or swimsuits that didn’t just show off my curves and tummy. I think about all the times OTHER WOMEN have told me “woah you ate that fast!” I think about the term FUPA and how it makes me laugh but only when I talk about my own or someone talks about theirs. I think about the times I hurt myself because a cis-man called me fat. I think about all the before and after photos of myself that barely look different unless I was famished. I think about how all those years I always looked okay but I never felt it. It’s fucked up and I got to stop. 

Seeing the body-positive, the fat-positive and the body-solidarity movements have given me a place to feel at peace. I finally feel like I can talk about my weight and chubby, fat, heavier are all just descriptions of my body. My body is just a vessel that gets thrown through hell. All of our bodies are out here just flying through hell at light speed. I believe that my soul is lucky to have a body at all at this point. any vessel or vehicle that can carry me at all. This year has been a constant uphill battle of pain and loss. What more can we take? The idea of still putting on focus on diet culture at this point seems so selfish to me. So narrow and cold. 

When we look in a mirror we see ourselves but we should ask ourselves to also try and imagine what we want around us, Do we want thousands of likes and photos of just ourselves? Or do we want to see ourselves immersed in mass human communication. The pictures I have hanging on my wall are of myself, my family and friends doing amazing adventures. Never once have I hung up a selfie and thought, what a good time. Maybe a headshot but YOU KNOW WHAT I mean. I want to be done with giving all my time to trying to meet unrealistic goals and especially the goals people have for me. I am my boss and no I never asked for your opinion thank you. 

Ever since I have let go of trying to be some super skinny gal I finally feel that I am in my body and nobody can shake me. I am not scared of being acceptable or what people think. I feel strong and have learned to love plus size fashion. I rarely even think about food, isn’t that crazy? I just eat!

I want to get off on one last juicy quote from Sonya Renee Taylor, she just eases my soul and I hope this resonates with you. 

“Saying I’m fat is (and should be) the same as saying my shoes are black, the clouds are fluffy, and Bob Saget is tall. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The only negativity that this word carries is that which has been socially constructed around it.… We don’t need to stop using the word fat, we need to stop the hatred that our world connects with the word fat.” 

― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology

Thank you for reading, love you guys. 

-Bowman

Resources:

1. Just Eat It by Laura Thomas PhD, RNutr

Instagram @laurathomasphd

1. The Fuck It Diet by Caroline Dooner

Instagram @thefuckitdiet

1. You Have the Right to Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar

Instagram @virgietovar

1. The Body is Not An Apolog: The Power of Radical Self Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

Instagram @sonyareneetaylor

1. Emily Mrozinksi, The Wellscape Podcast, 

Instagram @emilymro_moves

Loving someone through mental illness when you’re also mentally ill.

Well we know where we're going
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what we're knowing
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

-Talking Heads

I have been mentally ill most of my life. My journey all started when I was diagnosed with ADHD and put on a bunch of different medications throughout my adolescence. Nobody likes to talk about the side effects of ADHD medication, but every time I would take it my personality would be sucked out of me and I felt like a machine of focus. It was great for school but my mental health always suffered from taking it and I also was a funny looking kid that stuck out like a sore thumb in all of my classes, sports, and other activities. 

I was difficult to deal with. A hyperactive chubby redhead and not a lot of people could handle me. I couldn’t handle me. I have so many memories of me having terrible temper tantrums, fighting with friends that would get me in trouble in school because I was the loud one, so much sadness. I was different my whole life because of my red hair and crazy brain. 

Being the only loud red headed girl in my school when I was a kid was weird. I remember every time I would meet another redhead I would think we were about to be friends, but instead most young redheads don’t want to be associated with other redheads. It was baffling and I ended up depressed and anxious. 

I used to say I wanted to die so much that it was like my daily monologue to my parents. I just kept thinking I never fit in and I hated my body, my hair, and my brain.

I disliked almost every facet about myself.  "Who needs it?” I thought. I never thought anyone would truly love me. I had a couple boyfriends that were weird little bursts of lust but soon after that I just went into a long single period throughout my twenties where I just kept convincing myself I was going to be this hardworking entrepreneur that didn’t need no love! 

I may have not needed love, but I wanted sex. I had sex a lot with strangers and guys that didn’t even deserve this WAP! It was alot of meaningless, empty sex that was completely devoid of any love or tenderness because I thought I wasn't worthy of those things. I always callously said, “A relationship just isn’t in the card for me, guys.” Which always pissed my friends off. I never pursued anyone aside from a fun night of sex, because even the guys I would end up dating usually were a bunch of egotistical fucks. That is until I met Brad. 

Brad Galli to be exact. I should mention I did try to date a couple of other Brads before the current one. It wasn’t on purpose. Brad number one was a sweet dude I met while working my last summer job in Dallas before I moved to Denver and I was just too young. I shouldn’t have told him I even loved him because I was just a dumb eighteen year old and didn’t know what love was. He was a little older and ready to make some solid moves and I was on my way to college.  When I got to school in Boulder I realized my life was just starting and I should focus on school so I broke up with him in a text which is dumb but again, I was eighteen. 

The second Brad was a guy I met at a nightclub and he seemed so cool.  He was in the army and was only in Colorado because he was stationed there and we hit it off great initially. However, when words actually happened he ended up telling me “just some of the stuff you find funny, I thought was crude and not funny.” Which is hilarious that I ended up becoming a comic and so jokes on him except I actually told him, “Oh my God you are so wise.” Wow. Shoot me. 

Brad number three, the current Brad is quite the charm. I remember I had been doing stand up comedy for three years and was waiting to go up at a mic at one of our favorite old dive bars in Denver, El Charrito. My friend Steve was guest hosting and brought him up saying he is excited to see *this guy* performing again and he welcomed, Bradley Galli to the stage. 

Brad got up there and told a joke that went along the lines of “I think I fall in love with every woman I see but then I realized it was always at their place of work l, and you should ask yourself if there is a cash register between you and a gal because if there is, chances are it’s her job to be nice to you (This was now a little over three years ago so before that stupid article that came out with that same premise but anyway.)” Everyone in the room burst into laughter and I low key had an orgasm (kidding). I went up and told my jokes that also went well (duh) and then got off stage and bashfully ran up to him and said, “I think you are funny.” And he said I was funny too and that is how we met.

From that point forward I was out to trap him. I was also still pursuing other men in town though because why should I ever get heart broken? And the last dick I talked to before I dated Brad told me he didn’t want to date or hook up with me because he thought I would get attached and be sad if I saw him leave the bar the next day with another woman. That’s a bold statement especially when 70% of most women don’t even cum during sex. But good call, bro, I would probably get attached way too easy…..

The next day I told myself I am done going for assholes and I was going to ask Brad number three out. I put on a red dress before the mic and went right up to him and bought him a beer and just like that we hit it off. We got married, had a baby puppy, kidding again. We did end up in a relationship though.

When we ended up dating I noticed Brad had some tendencies to beat himself up over the smallest shit but it was never directed at me. We had a bumpy start to our sex life because I’m a morning person and he’s a evening person when it comes to banging. When I would wake up I would be ready to go and he was not ready to perform so he would beat himself up and then I would take it out on myself and we almost broke up but then we just talked about it and figured it out. 

I never noticed how much I beat myself up until I saw him beat himself up. Brad would talk to himself sometimes too about so many things and I remember one day he yelled, “You stupid fucking bitch!” And I thought he was saying that to me so I yelled back, “Um, excuse me?!” And he humbly said, "Oh my God! I am watching sports on my phone! It was towards a player not you!” We laughed it off and moved on.

We would have these moments of insecurity and vulnerability where it just felt like we could help each other. Then we went through an extremely difficult living situation where an old roommate was filming us without our knowledge, amongst other issues we had with him. We weren’t sure if we would get out of that living situation and when we did I had spent all my savings and money on just getting out of there and my rent technically went up 200-300 bucks. I was burnt out and exhausted.

During that time I slowly changed into an agitated little troll. I was snapping at Brad, and I was screaming about how I wanted to kill my self. It got bad. I just kept thinking I was such a huge piece of shit that couldn’t afford anything. I kept losing weight and thinking that was the answer to happiness and ended up giving myself an autoimmune disorder on top of the one I already had. I also was doing a lot of gigs that happened to have conservative crowds that hated all my material about Planned Parenthood, and just my material in general. All of it together made me a bit of a ticking time bomb. I was suicidal but the only person that knew it was Brad. Brad never shamed me, and he always said it was going to be okay and I’m not whatever awful names I was calling myself. There was a time I started just hitting my own arms while crying and Brad was broken down crying for me to stop. I was feeling too much pain and I just couldn’t turn the anxiety and depression off.

Then there was one particular night where I went up at a mic and bombed after watching some tool get away with a black-face joke. It shook me to my core that I didn’t land my jokes but that horse shit did (also he stole it from another racist comic) and I just bolted out of the room once I got off stage.  Brad immediately came after me screaming, “Katie! What the Fuck!” 

“Why am I even trying? I fucking suck! I gotta end it. I gotta end it right fucking now. You should just go back to the mic.” 

Brad held my hand and said he didn’t even want to get on stage that night and he ended up walking home from downtown with me panicking the entire time. Just to be clear we walked from downtown Denver to North Denver. It's a 90 minute walk and late at night after a long day.  By the time we got to our neighborhood we walked by a bar near our house and Brad gently asks, “Can I buy you a beer? I need one." We walked in and peacefully drank those ice cold beers and I then took a big deep breath and said, “I am sorry. I am going to schedule a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.” 

“It’s okay, babe!” Brad said with a smile. I ended up going and getting on medication which led to me getting into hot yoga and the rest of that year I felt so much more sane than I have in a long time. Then Covid hit. 

I remember the week Covid started getting real, I had plans with my friends to do mushrooms and watch a movie and we were saying shit like “Is this really going to happen? Are we really going to shut down?” And we were laughing and giggling our way through the day and then Brad came home in a huff. 

I went into the kitchen and asked him what was wrong, holding him and listening and he just said, “I am sorry! It’s just work was really bad. This is so real and it is going to be so bad.” I could tell he was so scared I just hugged him and kissed him and said we will get through whatever happens.

The next day everything was shut down and we were in a full on pandemic. I was working through this entire shit storm and Brad couldn’t work, couldn’t do stand up and he couldn’t watch sports. I kept myself busy through painting a cartoon every day and working so I initially couldn’t relate to his sudden depression. Not that I didn’t empathize but I couldn’t believe how fast he was crumbling and for that I will always feel sorry. As someone that has always been depressed and anxious I forgot how much conditioning and therapy I have had my whole life to prepare me for the sudden apocalypse we are now in. I also say this and still have minor breakdowns, who isn’t?

I always kept the bar low for what can happen and accepted I would always be trucking through my mental illness or some sort of hurtle. I never thought I would be the one helping someone else through their mental health problems. 

Brad did okay actually for the first few months of quarantine. I would text him lists of stuff to do around the house and he would do that while caring for our pup and I would just go to work and come home and try to find tasks and shows to give him worth. Brad would model for me and listen to me bounce joke ideas off him for my paintings and it was as good as it could have been.

Life was manageable for us up until sometime after I finished all the covid themed paintings. When businesses reopened and Brad went to back to work is when shit got rough. He hadn’t been working through this pandemic like me and it was eye-opening how impactful that was. 

As much as I complained about burnout and being on the frontlines of exposure while making shit for money, I was lucky enough to see people almost every day. I was the one that would also shop for us and would perform all the big exposing activities so I felt some connection to the world still. 

Brad was home alone for the entire time. 

By the time he was sent back to work he was already overcoming some intense agoraphobia and it did not help that his restaurant owner couldn’t care less about his employees. I understand this is a tough time for business owners but Brad's put dollars over the health of his employees and put so many people in a precarious situation.  The restaurant had five employees show up to work and then test positive for Covid and his boss wasn’t planning on shutting down at all. He also never told his staff or customers about the exposure. The staff had to let each other know.  After that experience I told Brad that’s his queue to quit.

Brad quit and that was the cherry on top of all of this crap. Brad was back at home without much to look forward to. I started to notice changes in behavior. Brad was easily stirred and just not excited about anything, not even when sports came back. 

I told Brad he should go to therapy and that I also needed it and it was helping but I think therapy was also surfacing all the pain he had been burying in the last five months. 

One day, Brad sat me down and just said, “Babe, I think I know what is wrong with me.  Sometimes I just can’t tell what reality is and then it goes away but right now I can’t get it to go away.” I said, “Okay, I’m so sorry I am going to go for a walk with the dog.” When I got outside of the house I started balling immediately.

I texted a close friend, Lucy and she called me. She said, “Man! I got a tightness in my chest for you.” I was still balling and laughing and just agreed. I don’t remember everything we even said but it came to me just saying, “It’s okay, Brad was there for me when I was suicidal last year and he’s just done so much that I have to be there for him.” I went back inside and tried to talk it out with Brad but he just started crying. Like the pandemic I just didn’t except it was my new reality yet. I still also will always feel bad about that.

Brad hugged me like he never has hugged me before. He was like a helpless shelter dog cuddling up with a stranger. His eyes just screaming, “Get me out of here.” It scared the shit out of me and my thoughts were “I don’t know how to do this, I can’t fix this.” But my words were, “It’s going to be okay.” 

I wish I could say that after saying he was going to be okay, that I was really helpful and awesome but the truth is I became scared and sometimes resentful. I had to go back to work that week and I would get off work and he would just say, “I am hanging in there.” Hanging in there wasn’t good or bad news. It was just purgatory. 

At one point I just yelled at him and said, “This is too much and we wouldn’t be here if you had just gone to therapy like I told you years ago! You aren’t making sense!” I texted him the next day that I think it is best that he reach out to his family and stay with them because I didn’t trust him to be alone and I didn’t see any progress in finding help either. It was impossible trying to find a psychiatrist for him and he was having a hard time doing basic tasks from the mania he was in. He said he would be gone the next day though and then I came home and had a therapy session with my therapist.

I don’t remember what I said other than scream-crying that everything was a mess and I don’t know if we were going to make it. My therapist reassured me that this was the beginning of Brad’s meltdown and these problems are temporary and usually people can get better. She also recommended that I find him a psychiatrist and yeah! So hard. 

The next day I went to work and came home to an empty apartment and I just started crying again. Brad was texting me all day because he was manic he couldn’t drive at the  time so his dad came and picked him up from Pueblo. “I am so sorry, thank you for being my rock,” he texted.

The word "rock" stayed with me. I never considered myself a rock. I always have thought without my friends, family and Brad that I couldn’t do anything. But here I was directing Brad to go stay with his parents and get help and he is doing it. It was still scaring me because I just felt like there needed to be all hands on deck for Brad but I myself was also alone now and struggling to be this rock he said I was.

I thanked Brad’s family over and over for taking him because I just felt guilty that I couldn’t help him break out of this state myself. Lorie and Dave, Brad’s parents were so kind. “I can’t believe you were dealing with this alone!” Lorie said and followed with a text from Dave, "He is going to get through this because you helped him.” I didn’t even feel like I did anything but it was nice to hear.

The rest of the week I was texting with Brad and his whole family. Every day was a challenge. Brad did not have any progress and he seemed to be getting worse and finally after almost three weeks we found a psychiatrist who said that Brad seems to be struggling with bipolar disorder but it wasn’t for certain. I thought this was a possible ray of hope. Lots of people have bipolar and now we can start to figure out how to treat it but Brad kept saying he still thought something else was wrong.

The possible BD diagnosis caused Brad to spiral into a suicidal state where his sister thankfully found him making a plan to end his life. I thought he was going into an inpatient facility willingly without reason. He texted me, ““I am going to an inpatient program. This isn’t bipolar and I am so sorry. I love you and thank you for always being my rock. There is a monster in my brain setting up shop and I can’t get him out but I am trying.”

 I texted back “That is good babe! I have been saying you needed psychological monitoring and evaluation from the start.” I slept good that night and texted his sister saying thank you for helping convince him to go. Brittney replied, “Well did he tell you why?” followed by a full story of what really happened. I won’t go into the details but Brad’s sister said that the clinic still said he didn’t seem like he needed to be admitted EVEN THOUGH he marked "yes" to all the suicidal tendency questions after attempting suicide (YUP, mental health in this country sucks). I was defeated. I put the phone down and started balling. I couldn’t imagine Brad in a state of wanting to end his life but here we were. 

So many times I have gotten close but stopped myself and went to a doctor. I just could not stop thinking about what if it happens again and what if I ever followed through with my past desires to end it. It hurt so much because that was not the Brad I ever knew. Brad wasn’t allowed to have a cell phone so I had to wait until he could call me back to talk. After a day of more crying I got the call. 

Brad was on the line, “I am so sorry babe.”

I took a deep breathe and said, “Brittney told me she found you trying to kill yourself. Why would you want that? How did you get there?”

Brad said, “I am so sorry, it just had been days without sleep and I just couldn’t turn off my brain and was backed in a corner.”

Crying again I blurt, “Well, I hope you know a lot of people would miss you and Baba and I would be alone. Do you think you want to do that again?”

“No. I want to get better, I do. You know what? I just keep thinking about how much I love you and baba and I want to get better for you and to see you again…  Are you crying?”

Me, “UM YEAH. God. Please never again.” I was laughing and crying at that point.

Brad said, “I love you so much and I am going to keep trying, they are making me get off the phone but if you want, call me tomorrow, I love you!”

“Love you.”

I felt fragile but better. “At least he is safe,” I thought. I met up with my friend and had drinks and comfort food at my friend’s bar, Wide Right. My friend, Meghan was bartending at her own business like a champ with another pal, Olivia and all I could say was “I just knew I shouldn’t be alone and this would be the one place I could ugly cry while stuffing my face.” My friend Anne showed up and we sat on the patio cursing the night away.

I am so very lucky to be surrounded by such a vast community of people and family that were able to spend the next two weeks with me in person or on the phone. From the friends that went to Chatfield to swim, my yoga classes to my work friends and boss letting me take some mental health days of my own. Thank you. 

Brad and I talked on the phone at least once a day. He would say he feels a little better each day but he then would always find a moment to say, “Well, I still feel crazy. I wish I could get back to where I was before this.” To which I would constantly say, “Babe, you aren’t crazy you are learning more about yourself and who you are and how to handle your feelings for the first time.” After a week of inpatient Brad was released with a diagnosis of depression and anxiety. Of course it was that.  American society does nothing for mental health. Female-bodied people are constantly turned away or told their pain isn't severe pain and the male-bodied people are told to bury their feelings and they are babies if they have them. 

The last week Brad and I were separated from each other was weird. He didn’t feel himself still and I was scared. The last time I saw him he was dissociating and now the next time I would see him would be at his sister’s wedding. How cute, but I was seriously looking forward to it. We also had a minor blow up because he sent me another text saying he was still off. I felt defeated and had my own panic attack at work and could not stop texting back and forth with doubt all day. Luckily, I had therapy that evening and my therapist gave me the recommendation to keep the bar low again and understand that healing takes time.

I still felt bad because Brad thought I wasn’t going to show up to the wedding which is insane, what kind of monster would do that?” I love Brad and I love his family. I went to yoga the next morning and my friend that was teaching the class asked how it was going. I opened up about Brad saying he still feels crazy and that I don’t know how to tell him to keep moving forward and I am scared it is going to be bad. She told me about the time she hit rock bottom depression and how she felt stumbly at the beginning of her healing because she was so scared to return to such a low state of depression it became its own kind of fear. 

I never thought about depression like that. I have always been one to scare myself so bad I would want to get away from the scary thoughts and keep moving forward. I never thought about it like that, she said it is like those videos of animals or people stuck in a slippery hole and they keep trying to get out but then they slip back in. Depression really can be that sometimes. I decided to listen to my therapist and set low expectations and head on down to the wedding. 

After a three hour drive I made it to the cabin, it was beautiful driving in. There was a rain storm with the sun shining through the clouds. It looked like a wild cartoon bar fight cloud just running through the mountains of Cuchara. When I got there a huge wave of anxiety came over me and before I could even get to a level of panic Brad’s face appeared in my car window.

 “Hey Babe," he said and he grabbed my bags and helped carry them down into the room we were staying in. Brad jumped on the bed and laid down like a french gal I’d like to paint. “Come here you," he said, which is what he always says when he wants to kiss. He just started kissing me a bunch and saying how much he missed me. It was adorable to say the least and then all the anxiety washed away in that moment. We were together again without many words but all the feels. 

The wedding was perfect and almost felt like Brad and I were on our first night out as a couple again and what better way to embrace each other than a wedding. We ate, we laughed and we danced. It felt like a dream. When we left he didn’t have much to say in the car and neither did I. We were probably both wondering if we were truly out of the woods. We got home and the first couple of weeks were bumpy. I kept trying to say that mental health is like a hike. There are parts that are straight up and then longer parts that feel stagnate. Finally one night I was on a show and I asked the host if Brad could do a spot. They said yes and I got to watch him back on stage with me just doing his thing and making people laugh.

 I will admit while he was in inpatient care I kept telling his family that whenever this was over he was going to write some funny-ass shit because like me Brad always writes jokes from life. It made me realize it is one of the only things we really have in common. He is into sports and I am the artsy one but we both find laughs in the darkest places of our lives and that is just how we bond. Covid might have changed comedy for a long time but at least we are lucky enough to have shows and jokes to write together about each other and so much more. 

When I saw him up on stage I saw the same Brad I have always known. Unsure of what he thinks of himself or the world around him but just a tad more able to express that and that is the most relatable shit in the world.. I know that if I ever feel like I am in a hole he is going to be at the top throwing me a ladder or sitting right next to me but at least he will be with me. We may not know where our future will go but in the end at least we have each other. 

<3 Bowman

Why You Should Buy Art Right Now

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for.” Georgia O'Keeffe

This pandemic’s pretty scary, am I right? I have been seeing so many people buying lots of stuff lately cause a lot of people actually are still working but from home. This is why I want to reach out to you guys specifically because you can help more than you know.

There’s bad news everywhere! Everyday is a winding road!  I just put Sheryl Crow in all of your heads. If you are one of the smart people wearing a mask when you have to leave the house, or you are a person who is never leaving the house or you can’t leave your house, I am sure you are bored no matter what. I know how bored you must be, because even though I have been working through this entire pandemic -- whenever I get a day or two off, I still find myself bored out of my mind at times.  

Let me guess you have already watched every movie. You have read every book and have tried every single sex position.  Great, you’ve done all that but LOOK AT YOUR WALLS. I literally just did a podcast with someone who told me they never have stuff on their walls. That is actually pretty normal. Every house party I have been to most of the time has nothing on the walls. 

I don’t know what it is about living these days but people are so on-the-go that they are failing to appreciate decent art. Before Covid hit, nobody felt the need to decorate because they just always felt like they were never at their homes enough to justify decorating them. A lot of people I know would be on the verge of moving so they wanted to get rid of their belongings. Believe it or not, I have had it happen more than a handful of times where people that have bought my art ask me if I would like it back since they are moving. I know the sentiment is that “I won’t have anywhere to put it,” but also, you could try to hand it off to someone that isn’t the artist. 

Every painting that has been given back to me I have given to someone else for free or painted over it or even thrown away because it seems as though it isn’t good enough to want to be passed on as something special. If you have art you don’t want anymore why don’t you see if a family member or friend would like it, or even buy it from you. Then you are making money off my art but l don’t care because I just want people to see my art, and other people’s art for that matter. You can totally sell old art, give it as a gift or if you have to give it back but just know that art you paid for may get tossed from an insecure artist.

Before I met my partner, I had been over to so many people’s places with nothing on the walls and it just felt so lonely. I feel like now more than ever is the time that you should have something on your walls to look at. Art was a meaning of status at one time but it also was there to give you something to fix your gaze on. Something to cherish. Just looking at it stimulates your brain and you feel just that much more “OOMF” in your life. 

Another reason is that there are thousands of artists making stuff right now due to how fucked up it is out there. I always try to support other artists by buying their work whether it be art, music, or writing. Before comedy got cancelled I would always say that we were all just passing around the same twenty bucks. I pay you on my show, you pay me on yours and then maybe I will get us lunch someday. It brings you closer together with the artist cause you are also supporting them. 

I recently invested in a small drawing with some stitching on the surface of a piece of toilet paper from my pal, Andrea Guzzetta. It is so cute and insane she could even do that without ripping it and I have it framed next to my door so when I leave to go to work at my clinic, I can remind myself anything is possible, and we are capable of even making art on the most sensitive piece of paper you can(obviously). BUT more importantly, I am also reminded that I am not alone and someone else is also making art in these times.  It makes me feel more connected. 

Have you ever walked into a museum and there is art from an era and you are like “OH MY GOD, I am so glad I didn’t live then.” Someone is going to say that about us if we have a lot of cool well kept art from right now. You may not want to remember everything that was going on in your life during this pandemic but looking back on positive things you did during this in future will make you feel better about yourself. And what better way to look back on it then having some art specific to the times you were struggling. 

Most artists don’t bank the money when they are alive. Most art you see that makes it into a hoity-toity museum was done by someone that was super cool and made it immediately (very hard to do), someone that is super rich and bored with life and just decided to make art (Damien Hirst), or someone that worked their whole life doing whatever their art is and never lived comfortably and suddenly rich people think they were a genius after they died. It is cruel but it is always how it has been. 

Artists are here to make stuff more fun. Don’t tell me you don’t have at least one scandalous memory of going to a fancy shmance apartment with cool art and it didn’t get you horned up. We all love fun but we also forget where it comes from and how much money it takes to do the work for the fun. I will say we also forget how affordable art can be. I make small stuff for fifty bucks or less and have a one hundred dollar minimum for things 8 x 10 or bigger. It doesn’t mean it gets much more expensive but that with shipping included is so affordable. Think about how many people spend over a hundred a week on just weed or alcohol. People always want art but they don’t want to pay for it. We can make up for that right now.

 If you have nothing on your walls, buy art.  For every poster of a real piece of art you bought, you could probably have found something cooler on Etsy.  Stop purchasing the same poster everyone has.  An Anchorman poster does not give you personality but your friend’s personal art does. Buy art for your friends.  It is very hard to know what your friend wants, but a painting of the two of you captures that moment and your friendship for life. Stop buying your friends cookbooks, it is insulting! Remember all your pets?  I had a client get a bunch of paintings representing his dog and it was such a fun idea. That’s a guy who will have a lady over and she will take one look at his walls and go, “OH MY GOD, this guy has passion.” Don’t forget that all of this can also be applied to other forms of creativity.  Buy comedy and music albums from local comedians and musicians along with the performer’s merchandise that they would normally be selling on the road.  There are so many great artists out there in so many different arenas.  Go out this week and support one of them.  

Thank you for listening. I think I got the point across here.  GO BUY ART. 

Thank you, stay safe and be good to yourselves.  It’s rough right now. 

<3  Katie Bowman

Thirty-one Days

My experience taking a month days off from drinking

“cheers” gouache, acrylic and water color on paper, 2013.

“Someone who has acted carelessly, But later becomes careful and attentive, is as beautiful as the bright moon emerging from the clouds.”

-Nagarjuna

Hiya friends! I am officially a little over one month into 2020 and I feel like I have lived a whole other year. This month was particularly interesting and challenging because I finally drank the kool aid and did thirty days without alcohol. I am careful to say that I was completely sober because I feel like people tend to replace one vice for another. By people I am talking about me don’t you worry but whether it is alcohol, sex, coffee, working out, marijuana, food etc… We always find something to replace our addictions.

I know there are a million blogs and write ups about sobriety and quitting drinking in general so this is nothing new but I had to report my personal experience for myself. To be honest, I have loved not drinking for almost the entire month. I started late and I don’t know why but it happened. I started on January 5th and my one month will be this Wednesday, February 5th. This blog will possibly be up by then though so I figured why not recap a couple days ahead. I need to remember my thoughts. 

I feel great physically. I took a break from drinking for two reasons. For the sake of trying to lose some weight and that did not happen. Instead I gained a bunch of muscle.  I have mentioned this in previous blogs, but I have hypothyroidism and my metabolism is still just waiting to kick in. I'm kidding of course.

 I work out every day, I partake in intermittent fasting, and I eat clean but I still tend to stay around the same weight. Every body is different though I guess.  What a concept? I am at peace with my body but why not try to stay in shape and stay healthy. Another huge reason I did this was because in all honesty I do not believe I have gone without at least one glass of some kind of alcohol for longer than a week since my late teen years. 

As a millenial I truly feel like sobriety has been all the rage. I see it all over the internet and everyone is constantly doing it. Some people are even cutting out coffee and cheese which is insane but to each their own. I support all of this 100% as long as you are advocating for yourself. I think it is great cutting out anything from your life if that is what you need but everyone’s experience is different. 

I do the intakes for patients every day at my job and when people get to the social questions about alcohol, drugs and tobacco it always gets weird. First of all, I know when a lot of you are lying about your substance intake on all of these questions. Especially smokers, because WE CAN SMELL YOU. It is weird to lie to the person that is trying to help you but the craziest thing I have noticed is there are a lot of people that have a couple drinks a week or maybe close to a drink a day. These people are also worried they are going to get a slap on the wrist and luckily I am not a health professional so I won’t be the person slapping any wrists.

Just like sobriety is becoming the new rage so is drinking and smoking a lot of weed. There are dispensaries, distilleries and breweries popping up all over the place with kiddos running around them. Maybe there are not kiddos at dispensaries but it is totally not weird to see a bunch of kids in a place that serves alcohol lately, especially in Colorado. It makes me think about generations before me and how a lot of substances were just a part of the little things in life. It used to be the norm to smoke inside at your job, and to even have the occasional cocktail in the office.  I have memories of my dad coming home from work and having a glass of wine while he would finish up his work and I never thought anything of it. I don’t think having a drink a day is any worse than someone having candy every day. Like I said, a vice is a vice but every health professional I know always says, “if it is affecting your life negatively then it is a problem.” 

That is a mantra I can get behind. I have always let the people around me do as they please. I am nobody’s mom or guidance counselor so I really don’t care what people do. My whole life I have heard my peers chastise other people for living a life a little different than theirs. People need to worry more about themselves than others. I cut out alcohol just to see how it really felt so that when someone else tells me some condescending story about why they don’t drink I can at least say, “HEY, I DID THE THIRTY DAYS BRO.” That being said I will go into all the cool things I learned from cutting out alcohol about myself. 

Taking a break from drinking was helpful in teaching me that I don’t have to treat myself to a drink as much as I have in the past. I wasn’t blacking out all the time but I would have a drink or two if it was free, someone else was having one, any occasion, a long day. Yes, there were just too many reasons for an alcoholic beverage. Maybe I should look at it like candy? I don’t eat cake and candy that much unless I am at a big event or celebration and maybe that is how alcohol can be for me. 

As a comic, I am in places that serve alcohol almost every single night. Sometimes we even get paid in drinks.  There are drinking themed comedy shows as well and not to mention all of the comedian gatherings where everyone just happens to be drinking. I just used to find a reason to have one or two drinks if I was out at anything comedy related. I was definitely raised to not be wasteful and I feel like that carries over into my eating and substance habits sometimes. “Don’t let anything go to waste,” I tell myself. It is how I have always been. But what does one do when these substances and things become something to be had all the time. 

I have always been someone that enjoys a good wine, beer or my favorite drink, a nice tequila on the rocks with some lime, sometimes some soda water. I  always just enjoyed it and then as I started to get older I would feel the hangovers harder from smaller amounts of wine and beer. So I stopped drinking those as much and just stayed with tequila because the hangovers were better. It is great but it’s like someone asking you if you had to choose one food for the rest of your life. Nobody can pick just one. I dulled it out a bunch. Also, you may not feel such a hard hangover from a tequila but if that’s what you are chilling on at a party you don’t need much to get up. It was just a culture that was a part of my weeks to have a drink socially. 

Socially is my favorite option on the answers for “how much do you drink?” at my clinical job. When people can’t describe borderline alcoholism to me they just shrug and collectively (the patient and myself) we say “SOCIALLY!” together. It is funny but I think nobody really knows when something is a problem. It’s hard to say. A lot of my friends have gone cold turkey with alcohol and I respect it a lot but I just still don’t think I am in a place where I feel like I have to cut it out completely and that is what kind of scares me.  I just don’t know if alcohol was a huge struggle for me more than just realizing how much of this was stemmed from me just being bored all the time. 

Stand up, day jobs and most every day activities are filled with a lot of waiting around and it never occured to me to just be in the moment and not worry about a buzz to take the edge off all the weird shit I see at work daily or just how wild our country is right now. I think I just gave myself too many reasons to drink for a while there and after taking some time off of it I am realizing I don’t need it or crave it as much as I thought. 

It feels great to not wake up feeling like sleep could have been better, or waking up remembering the weird food I got the drunk munchies for and ate the night before. I just really have been able to fit in even more into my schedule than I was before because I am not tired at all. That is the biggest take away. I already cram a solid 80 hours of crap I do for a living into each week. Why not let my body be happy and hydrated for some of those days. I will also admit it can bring out emotions and not drinking has definitely helped me to give even less fucks about the small shit or anything that doesn’t involve me. Days without drinking help you remember you have everything you need to crush life inside you already.  

 I didn’t crave any alcohol until I went to my friend’s engagement party. Boy, that was a big test. It was this past Saturday too so I was like 25ish days into my stride and so many people were like “Hey! Want a drink? Take a shot with me!” It is funny how much you have to tell someone that you are for sure not drinking that night. I really did want a drink but I was driving and I also was so close to 30 days without drinking and why fuck it up now? After about an hour I was dancing all stoney bologna Bowman and having a good time. I was able to really take in the love at this party. I know that is so mushy and you probably hate me for saying it but it is true. I was riding on everyone else’s energy and it was lovely. Also, I had a cupcake and didn’t feel bad about it. Hilarious how much I would avoid sweets but just be poisoning myself with alcohol some nights instead. I will take the cupcake.

As I was driving my partner Brad and I home after the party I recalled all the bullshit that happened in January. Work was a mess.  They were working us into the ground to make up patient numbers from December, and there were a handful of people I love that lost some loved ones. There was a lot of weird personal stress surrounding my favorite people in this world and myself. It was a time where I felt like the only power I had to share was to be a good listener for some of these pals. I know myself and I know I am emotional. If I was drinking, I do believe I would have been a tad more dramatic with my feelings but instead I held strong for my friends and family. For me, that was a new strength to carry around with me. Just a new way to step up and jump in for the people around me.

I no longer feel that a drink will take the edge off. Instead it will just be something to celebrate with here and there. I need to earn my drinks. I also must say that my stand up feels sharper without a drink. Mini addition to 30 days without alcohol I also did twenty-six days of yoga last month. I probably wouldn’t have completed that if I was sleepy and hung over any of those days. I feel lighter and happier and I am not sure when I’ll have a drink again but if I do it will be worth it and not a waste because I feel that it can be a gift in moderation. I am two days away from a month and I will be spending it not drinking and hosting a themed show at Comedy Works on Wednesday, February 5th at 8 PM (Call the Club for Tix) 

I couldn’t be more pumped. Thanks for reading and until next time friends. 

Katie

Buh Bye 2019.

“Poking Around” Acrylic on wooden panel, 2019. (Sold)

“Spent 18 hours waiting stoned for space.

I spent the same 18 hours in the same damn place

I'm on a road shaped like a figure 8

I'm going nowhere, but I'm guaranteed to be late.”

-”interstate 8” by Modest Mouse

Greetings strangers. It has been months since I have written a blog piece but I have done a lot this year to reflect on so I feel passionate about writing this post. I had no idea where to begin because this year started out a bit rocky but I definitely had a smooth landing. Here is my list of losses and triumphs for 2019. 

I had to make some cuts with friends this past year and this is something that I seem to struggle with from time to time. I have tons of friends. I am a good friend, but sometimes you have to ask yourself whether or not this person is still adding to your life or taking away from it. This doesn’t mean you have to look back on these people with disgust. I think we tend to cancel people a lot in today’s world but if we truly cancelled everyone and their work where would we be. Every artistic, scientific and mind blowing phenomenon has come from people in history that had some talent but also some shame. We are only human after all. So, when losing a pal I try to embrace it for what it is. I would be lying if I didn’t say some of the people I cut out of my life weren’t brilliant to me at times and I can appreciate the roles they played in my life. Do I cut their faces out of all my photos and throw them in the trash? No! I just get sad for a moment but I think that is pretty healthy. 

I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder called Lichen Planus. It was due to the fact that I already have hypothyroidism and started doing the keto diet and it worked at first.  I lost thirty-five pounds dudes, but I was sick looking and didn’t feel great. My hair was falling out and the lichen planus was causing my mouth to break out in severe ulcers. Finally, after a couple dental and oral surgeon appointments they did a biopsy and found out it is lichen planus. I found out that lichen planus is caused when your body is mad. My body got mad at me for losing weight. Isn't  that just fucking hilarious! Also, I was told when it stops flaring up it can be triggered again and return on my skin or in my vagina! So luckily I had it in my mouth I guess? Can you imagine ulcers in your vagina? Boy does that sound fun!

I stopped keto after that in the spring and went full vegan for two months and all of the lichen planus cleared up. Isn’t that wild? I gained back some weight but I feel happy and energized again. It was a huge lesson for me that all of our bodies are different and beautiful. Someone else’s physical appearance is their own and none of your business so worry about yourself and stop comparing yourself to others. I still do intermittent fasting which still helps but sorry, keto was not for me. Diets aren’t for everyone. What a concept?! 

I lost the ability to stay vegan. It is very hard to be vegan if you perform most nights, make artwork, try to fit a work out in most days, have a relationship, a dog and a day job at a reproductive health clinic. You would have a hard time meal prepping too so fuck off kindly. How do people not get sick of meal preps. The same thing every day for a week? DUDE, I just can’t. Most days I eat vegetarian and every once in a while I have fish but man does my digestion feel better. If you are looking for a good read to kick you in the butt to stop eating animal products, I recommend "Eating Animals." It ruined a lot for me and I don’t even know how I still eat fish. It is terrible but I am trying y’all. I can’t call myself a pesca-egg-dairy-tarian because that is just annoying. 

I got diagnosed with severe anxiety, I already had severe anxiety and depression off and on for years but I went through a very toxic living situation this year too. I could write paragraphs about it but it is not worth the time. Looking back on it, everything was just really sad and unfortunate and sometimes people are just trying to survive. It did burn some bridges but what can you do? I lived in this house for six years though and was forced by the living situation to break the lease and move out. That was not how I planned to leave a house full of memories right out of college but it was my first house right out of college. Gross right? I did start to convince myself I was going to die in that house. I don’t know why but everyone around me was moving so much faster with their lives. Living in that house aside from the living situation was a mind-fuck and I am glad I am out. After moving out my partner and I moved into a new apartment that is now $350 more than our old rent. It triggered some severe panic attacks because I just couldn’t keep my head above water. I was taking out my stress on my partner and he was more than amazing. I had a melt down one night that was so bad it convinced me to go to a doctor for my mental state. That is when I went on zoloft and it changed my life. 

If you have read my past blogs you know I was always on some pill for my ADHD and what have you for a long time. I felt like I was throwing in the towel going back on medication for mental health but it had to be done. My sister influenced me that zoloft was the key to helping her so I thought I would try it too. My doctor said siblings tend to have similar reactions to medications. It was insane the first two weeks adjusting to it.  I won’t lie, I felt strung the fuck out dude but I did feel less anxiety and that was helping. It was crazy learning that my problem was anxiety mostly and not depression. I learned this mostly by seeing how I was improving in my daily tasks. I used to suck at drawing blood at my dayjob because I was so worried about hurting the person. Zoloft helped me give less fucks and let me know it just had to be done and it is going to hurt but they asked for it. This was the same for my stand up comedy and art. I got even better at confronting people without feeling bad. If I failed at something it wasn’t the end of the world and I can now sit through a baseball game with my partner and not be anxiously waiting for it to be over. More patience for myself, my friends and family. 

Getting on Zoloft helped me have the patience to walk into the yoga studio by my house and take the plunge. It was amazing. I will be honest, I used to think yoga seemed like it was not a work out and boy was I wrong. I take full shame on this. I have not worked that hard in a minute. I still run and stuff but hot yoga is my jam now! I feel insanely rejuvenated after. Every class has helped me flow through my stress and worries each day. My partner comes with me too! We are the couple I used to hate!  There is a cute hot yoga studio right by my house called Better Buzz and what an amazing community to tap into. Truly helps with my stand up comedy in many ways too. I am so relaxed lately it just feels wonderful. I literally am waking up to go to 6:00 am classes sometimes. I never thought I'd do that.

My stand up comedy has reached an amazing place. I now run two successful shows in Denver and I am getting steadily booked. I feel comfortable on stage and have stretched my time to forty-five minutes dude! I have been headlining and featuring more. I performed in multiple states this year and even went all the way to Alaska. I feel fierce and funny. It is the best. 

My art career has really taken off. It is strange to think I almost felt done with it years ago but I think I just needed to take some time off making art and just working on my own voice. I re-entered the art game and have been slanging art for many. Part of the reason I think I am doing well is I started taking myself seriously about what I am worth. This still does not mean I am out here selling paintings for $1000+. I just know my audience. I know my audience on stage and in my art. It’s like when you watch a person go up at an open mic and start doing jokes in the style of someone they admire but they aren’t truly talking from their own point of view. I thought I was ready for graduate program in art school and got turned down on a rec letter because an old mentor knew I wasn’t ready and she was right. I was making art for other people not myself and all of it wasn’t what you would call a body of work. It looked like a bunch of assignments. I see this in stand up comedy too. People think they are ready for certain gigs and what have you when they just aren’t. They are not wrong for asking but I think when you ask you learn your place and hopefully get better. If you don’t get better, just quit cause neither of these places of work owe you anything. Nobody is going to buy artwork that they don’t like and nobody is going to laugh if they don’t think you are funny. It is important to check in with yourself and grow from where you are receiving the best feedback.

 Now, when someone commissions art from me they usually know what my portfolio looks like and thus they get a sense of what their commissions will be. I also stay affordable because most people are middle class or below. Most people are the people I want to make art for and laugh. I am not out here making art for the one percent.  

By working with people on budgets and creating affordable shows, merch and art you represent yourself beautifully because those people are going to rave about how easy and cool it was to invest in your work. The more products you sell the more people that have your shit to rock in their homes and stuff. Sure it would be cool to price my work at a higher rate but I want to appeal and be supported by people that represent me as well. That also goes in hand with comedy, I used to try to impress the *cool kids* sometimes but the people that laugh at my jokes are nerds and lots of women. That is cool because women are the higher population but also taking over the world and will probably always want the nerds for their offspring. I am joking but I do think leaning into what you think is cool and the people that support you is the way to go. 

My partner, Brad and I are living happily in our little apartment with my dog, Diego aka Baba! It just feels good to have a partner that truly supports every move I make and checks me when I am being a diva. I love him so much and here are just a few amazing things he has done. He brings my stuff I forget at home to work, warms up the car and takes the ice off if he is there when I am rushing to work, literally shows up to the brewery to set up the showroom for me since I work all day so I can have a meal before going back out and hosting a show again. He adopted Diego as his own so now Diego has two dog parentals. He grocery shops and cleans, he embraces all of my friends and family with love. Brad makes me laugh very hard all the time. He adapts well and loves to learn how to do things thus now we cook and go to yoga together. He texts me before every stand up comedy show to tell me to break a leg and if he is there he always high fives me and tells me I am great after. I love him and I am so lucky to have him. 

Some cool achievements I did this year are getting to be a part of the AlaskaB4UDie Festival, Southwest Chief Bicycle and Comedy Festival, Highplains Comedy Festival and performing on some amazing shows like The Grawlix, 50 First Jokes, Mentalpause, Chatterbox, Tomorrow! With Ron Lynch, all of the patio shows I cohosted with Brad at Call to Arms Brewing Company, all the shows I headlined and getting to do the Lady2Lady, Unsent and I Don’t Think So Honey podcasts. I got to be in a short horror film, 666 Crimson Ave which is available to rent and buy on Amazon! I also just won the Live version of Drunk History, Harry Potter themed in Denver. These were all amazing and fun experiences. 

This is pretty much it and all I have to say. It overall was a very productive year and I can’t wait to see what 2020 has to offer. I love you all and hopefully I will write another one of these sooner than later. Have an amazing new year. 

Katie Bowman

A Letter From My Brain to My Body

“Thinking” Acrylic on canvas 5/2015

Hello again!

This summer has been crazy. I just got out of a very tense living situation earlier in April. It is a long story of sad truths and pain that most people don’t need to hear about. I came out of it with some new awesome life changes and some hard ones. My rent has gone up $300 in the last year but I am now only living with my partner. Going through so many changes and the pure weight of having to some how come up with that much more money when I haven’t even gotten a raise at PP in over a year is a lot. I ended up having a meltdown one night after an open mic and decided to check myself into a doctor. I had found myself taking my anxiety out on my relationships in my life and myself. Just beating myself up all the time. It was tough but I finally made the decision to go on Zoloft. I haven’t been on any medications for my mental state since I went off my ADHD medication years ago. You can imagine I was pretty scared but I was going to just keep hurting myself and I just turned in the towel and said I will try it when my sister who had recently gotten over the stresses of having a baby and just getting pregnant, suggested it. She too went on Zoloft and said it was a huge difference. Just in the first few days I gained the ability to feel like everything was going to be okay. I don’t think I realized how much doubt I had in my heart from how bad my depression and anxiety was. The brain is such a complex place if I don’t say so myself! I decided to write a letter from my brain (if it could speak for itself) to my body. I know what you are thinking, IT ALREADY DOES but that is not the point, I think my brain tries to play games where it convinces me that things are just the way they are and will never get better. Thank GOD there is outside help out there. Also BTW, the union at PPRM did go through, 3% raise it is, thank fucking GOD. Anyway, to better things and la-d-fucking-da. I do feel better, for now.

From the Top

By Katie Bowman

I am your vehicle.

I take you wherever you need to go.

I keep you busy.

I tell you when to rest.

I give you thoughts.

I give you love.

I have genetic history built in from your parents, your ancestors even.

I know that your family confuses me always.

I know I can turn on you at any time. 

I sometimes feel superior to you. 

I just don’t see you sometimes for what you truly are. 

I expect a lot. 

I keep you wanting more.

I keep you thriving but make you question if that is enough.

I am complicated.

I struggle to love you.

I bog you down with memories.

I am sad you don’t support me back as much as I try to support you. 

I know that one of us will go first.

I wish we could just love each other.

I get sad when you don’t do what I want you to do.

I compare you to every other body around you.

I took you for granted when I was young.

I think you are the only one of us people see.

I get sad that people never see just me.

I want to try to love you more.

I want to guide you through life without pain.

I wish I could hug you but I don’t know how.

I wake up each day just trying to forgive myself for all the pain I have caused us.

I feel your aches and pains.

I taste your thirst.

I numb you up and leave you to dry out.

I cry out in my sleep that one day you will take me somewhere great.

I am learning to see that we are just trying to be. 

-Bowman

Picking Up An Old Friend

“Goober,” Acrylic on Canvas. 12/08/2018

I have been painting and drawing off and on since college, but I have to admit I felt lost all the time while doing it. Lately I have been back at it and it is the first time people are buying a lot of my art. This is also the first time in a long time that I am really enjoying myself while painting.

I have such a funny relationship with creating art. Almost my entire life I was making art on my ADHD medication and it was always kind of a hot mess looking back at it all. I always look back at stuff and hate it. Maybe some of it was good but it is so hard to tell sometimes because after all, we are our worst critics. I was talking with my therapist about it and she made a great point. A lot of the time being in a school and making art is way different than just making something on your own circumstances. The school I went to was heavy in conceptual art. Everything had a theme or had to be thought provoking. It is funny to say art has to be thought provoking when obviously all visual pieces of work trigger some sort of thoughts upon viewing it but I was creating under someone else’s terms a lot of the time.

If you read my first blog, I talked about a past mentor that denied me a recommendation letter two weeks before I was about to apply to all these graduate schools. I said how I felt she was right. I just wanted to point out that I now feel more than ever it was true. I had to fall back in love with creating something without an outside drive. Now, I don’t think i am applying to a graduate program any time soon but imagine the person I would have become if I just threw myself into it.

I fell back in love with creating visual art this year because I truly feel happy making it in my new brain. In the last few years of creating stuff and then painting over things I couldn’t sell or showcase and repainting new work on top I realized I clumped all my creativity into this rough part of my life. Creating visual work felt nutty at times after school. I would always try to make these thought provoking vaginas and this depressed narrative of my past. I was hung up on the “what if” of it all. I felt like my art had to change the world all the time. I never once thought to make pieces that people just felt good looking at. I always loved painting in colors and organic shapes mixed with poppy stylized crap that we use to express ourselves in texts or handwritten letters.

I am doing better aside from the world going crazy. I am doing better at channeling my energy and focusing it into creative outlets like telling jokes, painting and writing. I can leave my humor on the stage for the most part. When I am painting and drawing I am releasing all my worries and stress into fast quick strokes. My paintings and drawings don’t have to be anything for anyone either. They are mine so I do have a say in what they look like. This time around I felt the creative bug hit me and I logged onto Facebook and asked people for a bunch of photos of pets. I was shocked at how bad people are at photographing their pets, HA! But I found my friend’s cat yawning to have a ton of personality.

I whipped up the painting you see above in a night and it felt awesome. It felt naughty almost cause for once I was beaming with a confidence I have not had in a while when it comes to art making. I posted it and said in a nutshell, “THIS is the style I am working in, if you would like something similar then get at me.”

I gave myself power over people that would commission something from me because they felt bad. They hear I am a painter and all the wrong lights go off in their heads. A lot of people just commission stuff without an idea of what they want or they have never seen an artist’s portfolio and think they are going to get some completely different type of portrait. Saying it is my new style let people know, you either get something fully up to my wild mind or you go find someone else. People dug it, I even got DM’s and friends and coworkers walking up to me to tell me so. This never happened and it lit some fire under my ass for once.

Life will keep throwing anxieties and fears at you. You have to work through them just keeping moving forward. Pain and fear can be a power that hits you and runs through your body looking for a place to release and if you don’t get it out it festers. I feel like I finally learned to get it all out. I get it out laughing and creating things for people that are filled with emotion. I feel like it really shows with the raging explosions of chaos and colors in my art. My brain likes to keep moving forward and I now don’t fear leaning into the struggles that surround me each day. ADHD brains are a lot like a fussy kid. You have to find anything and everything to keep them interested but if you find the right outlet they are all about it. We work best with a vast support system and appreciation. These are the hardest parts to hold onto for myself but I am ready to keep working at it. I am not sorry at all to be so passionate. It is who I am dammit.  I am lucky to be pursuing all the creative outlets I have right now. I just have to be aggressive and strong.

Thanks for reading!

Bowman

Thick and Thoughtful

“Inches,” a self portrait I did my senior year of college in 2013. It’s a serigraph printed on a photo plate.

  “Body positivity is acceptance and appreciation of all human body types. It is a social movement rooted in the belief that all human beings should have a positive body image, and be accepting of their own bodies as well as the bodies of others (Wikipedia).”

   Hi again, I know it has been a minute since I felt compelled enough to post but that is how my blogging style seems to roll. Also, Wow! I can’t believe the only definition I found for “body positivity” was on wikipedia.  Sorry. I have been thinking about the term “body positivity” a lot lately. I recently have lost around 30-35 pounds and I feel like I am at my healthiest state since before college. I know it because not only do I feel great but people just can’t help themselves from commenting on it. I am happy and I appreciate the support but I can’t help but feel like my thicker-old-self feels some sadness in the commentary I have heard.

  I posted the definition of what body positivity is because I feel that in my personal experience living day by day in multiple social scenes (whether at my day job, comedy events or just hanging with family and friends) I have heard many disappointing takes on what it actually means. The most common being that everyone that does not fit into the *Hollywood ten* is lazy or gross. People seem to forget that everyone is human. There are all shapes and sizes of people and they are all valid beautiful people. The body positivity movement came to be because the standard of self worth in this country is unattainable AF but also people have stopped treating others with respect. Someone else’s size or appearance shouldn’t affect how they are seen and heard.

  I recently attended a beautiful body positivity seminar at a Planned Parenthood conference ran by some amazing queens; Ashley Brink, Skylar Kunce, Danielle Johnson and Jessie Shay. The seminar was on body positivity and it was shocking. Some of the statistics will always stick with me. I learned that about 65% of Americans are discriminated by their own doctors due to size leaving them uninspired to get better. Doctors are telling people the reason they are experiencing current symptoms of whatever they came in for are due to being overweight. I also am always still learning about the struggles with people that identify with bigger size and I myself have fluctuated throughout my life. We don’t even realize when we are derailing our own self.

  You can find a million testimonies all over the internet but a more recent one from the Cosmopolitan will tell you about a lady that had a terrible cough that she couldn’t seem to shake.  She kept going in, was prescribed antibiotics, and was told to lose weight and sent on her way. Low and behold the poor darling had cancer. You can find the link to that in my resources at the end of this blog if you wish to see the horror. Another point made to me was that we don’t have scales, blood pressure cuffs and other medical equipment made to measure the dimensions of people considered obese. There was an article in the New York Times about a women who went in for a problem and again the doctor just kept emphasizing how much she needs to lose weight, “He came to the door of the exam room, and I started to tell him my symptoms,” Ms. Nece said. “He said: ‘Let me cut to the chase. You need to lose weight (G. Kolata 2016).’” When she asked how much does she weigh he just said the scale maxed out at 350 but that is all he knew. How will she know a new medical plan is even working if she doesn’t know where her starting point is. This happens all the time and then people also get prescriptions that are not based off their correct weight. That is just straight up dangerous and how is anyone supposed to get to a place of health they want when they are constantly being put down for their physical appearance. If we want to see people at their best we should be giving everyone an open mind with encouragement.

  That is just the tip of the iceberg too! There are tons of people trying to gain weight. There are so many diseases like Hyperthyroidism for example where one cannot retain any nutrients or weight due to their thyroid being overactive. There are people with disabilities, scars, hair loss, etc. that struggle with self acceptance every day. I have friends that would not smile in pictures due to their teeth. It is not just people of larger size suffering from body image. People refrain from doing simple activities like swimming with friends, going to a gym, or hiking because they are worried about how people perceive them.

  I watched an amazing Ted Talk from a lady by the name of Lindsay Kite, where she states, “Girls and women aren’t only suffering because of the unattainable ways beauty is. They are suffering because they are being defined by beauty. They are bodies first and people second (Kite. 2017).” I loved this take but it doesn’t include all genders that are not white cis-male-bodied people and I am not saying those men don’t experience body shaming too, but it was pretty nuts watching Ed Sheeran and Beyonce’s appearance at the Global Citizens Festival wasn't it? I'm partially kidding but for real a lot of people that aren’t a “Hollywood Ten” do feel this every day. A lot of people feel like they have to worry about how they look before they even speak. This obsession with being beautiful before being taken seriously causes so many horrible side effects in people. Alcohol and drug abuse, verbal abuse, self-mutilation and suicide. That is why the body positive movement is so important. It isn’t about just bodies. It is seeing all humans as beautiful personalities.

  Now, I wanted to share my own experience. I have struggled with weight all my life. I am just now learning why it has been such a huge part of my life’s focus and I figured out a small chunk of this mental journey. I was a big baby and had a tiny mom that could not hold me long enough through my younger years thus food was always there to make me feel full inside. I'm kidding about my mother.  She was tiny but strong! As strong as she was though, my mother was not able to relate to me. As I have joked about on stage - I have my dad’s genes. I was always a thicker gal. I went to so many doctors, therapists, dietitians, work out coaches and even a hypnotist (That bit is true). All of them treated me like the people prior. I was working out four-six days a week and eating what I thought was healthy.  I definitely threw in the towel sometimes and just binge ate because I was watching it work for everyone else.

  My old doctor used to say, “Are you working out? Eating healthy? Great! Keep it up.” Her schedule happened to change a year ago which is how I stumbled upon a new doctor that truly cared about me and used new knowledge to fix obesity in her patients. On the day of my first appointment with this new doctor she came in handed me this book: “The Obesity Code” by Jason Fung and just said it had a lot of new research with amazing breakthroughs. She also noticed a lot of people have been trying intermittent fasting and high-fat diets from these studies and that I should read the book for homework, schedule a six month check up and see how I am doing. I was skeptical but it did work. I have lost a ton of weight since last February.

  Now, people talk about it all the time. Those two diet fads are so popular everyone is doing it and that is awesome but I will say it drives me crazy how much it has become the point of conversation around me personally. I am happy I am looking healthier but I also don’t want it to be the main focus for who I am. I see people and that is the first thing they bring up, or I get off stage and a male comedian tells me, “You keep gettin skinny on me.”  Like wow! Glad you were keeping an eye on my fat count you old geezer. I have to be honest, I gained a tiny bit back at times due to stress eating. It became this new standard I had given myself and I hated that people reminded me to check myself.

  So, what did I do? I ate baby and gained some back. I am finally getting back to just incorporating my new way of living into my life and taking care of myself but I keep hearing so much hate about people’s image. I don’t know if this blog is even helpful but it is just something I had to sit down and get off my chest. Stop telling me what I am other than smart, strong, and beautiful. The little meany bugs in our brains like to come out and say awful things sometimes especially in fits of rage, jealousy or judgment. I get it. But why not try to hold it in and see ways that a person is trying their best. We all need to remind ourselves that maybe someone didn’t ask for your input. I see a million smokers get more respect than people that are discriminated for their body’s appearance.

  We live in an age where everyone wants to have an opinion on someone and the easiest points to be made are about looks. Sorry to pull out my improv brain but why not try some A to C thinking when you are going to look into why someone triggers thoughts of excitement, rage, sex (I don’t know lol). We are better than using appearance to get places. The next time you (By you, I mean all the haters. I see you.) want to start talking about someone’s weight in a way that they are failing themselves you should remember that doctors have been failing people for decades. As Jason Fung stated on the Obesity Code podcast, “One thing I want people to see when I educate people is that we don’t see obesity as their fault, I see obesity as a failing of the medical community to provide the correct advice to people to lose weight and not be diabetic.” The next time you want to comment on someone’s physical appearance ask yourself what else has this person done to make you feel the need to go there and then reflect on why it is something you obviously care so much about.

  As for myself, I would like to say that I wasn’t born into a creative life to worry about my body and where it gets me other than walking and talking. I chose The path as an artist to create another love language. I want to make people feel good and that is when we truly look our best.

<3 Bowman

Resources

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Body positivity. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_positivity [Accessed 7 Dec. 2018].

Dusenbery, Maya. “Doctors Told Her She Was Just Fat. She Actually Had Cancer.” Cosmopolitan, Cosmopolitan, 18 Apr. 2018, www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a19608429/medical-fatshaming/.

Kolata, G. (2016, September 26). Why Do Obese Patients Get Worse Care? Many Doctors Don't See Past the Fat. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/health/obese-patients-health-care.html

Kite, L. Talks, TEDx. Youtube, Youtube, 6 Nov. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=128&v=uDowwh0EU4w

Fung, J. (2016). The obesity code: Unlocking the secrets of weight loss. Vancouver: Greystone Books.

Tovar, Virgie Tovar Virgie. “Take the Cake: Why Fat Liberation Isn't About Whether Fat People Are Healthy.” Ravishly | Media Company, ravishly.com/fat-liberation?fbclid=IwAR1TG_i60pYDQvXpaeKOeOGpziyTPfYz64W4I94u7j_VqYLgx9NNbLBfDW0.

Another year of #Metoo

We are about a year into the #metoo movement and the debate of sexual assault is getting more and more defined in my opinion. It’s hard to watch all the outed celebrities, politicians, and even peers of mine testify with a face of disbelief. The utter shock in their face just shows how pressing it is that everyone has their voice be heard. So here we go. In support of the cause and the one year anniversary of the #Metoo movement I want to share my voice.

I spent a lot of today trolling news sites and twitter trying to follow the Kavanaugh trials. Every time I got a moment to watch the actual testimonies I was blown away. It takes courage to come forward and deal with the trauma these victims are dealing with.  “We were having fun er- I was drunk!” Or “I didn’t realize she didn’t want to be touched.” No matter how they say it, there’s an obvious issue here and it is communication. It wasn’t that long ago that any voice aside from the cis white male was even valued. It is obvious America left a lot of work to be done. We always could have been doing more. There couldn’t be enough personal boundaries established in this country still. People that think they can make racial slurs due to having friends of color or “making a move” on him and her is still how people approach intimacy. It is all a terrible way of getting to know each other isn’t it?

When I was in high school my mother told me I never had to let any person touch me in ways I didn’t want them to and I wish I was able to take in how simple of a concept that is. The social pressure of dating has never been in a good spot in this country. When generations before mine dated, you just stalked a lady down and if you threw enough compliments at a girl the hope was that she would eventually give in. Now, In present culture, sex is open and everywhere! Everyone is doing it earlier and earlier. Nobody wants to label anything and most people are online. There really is no boundary even through texting. I can’t put a number on how many awful comments and dick pics I have received just trying to meet up for drinks. This back and forth is so fun until it has been weeks and we haven’t met in person am I right people?

I have many memories of what my middle school and high school peers would tell me to do. Guys would make fun of us and this meant he likes you. Then we would all go to the movies and you were told by your already sexually active friends if they stick their hands in sexual places you should just go with it and that means he likes you. Wow, right? And even better I learned anyone that wasn’t doing that was fucking loser. I almost laugh because for a long period of time I had a mouth retainer glued to the roof of my mouth and I would lie in bed crushing on boys and worry about if they tried to kiss me their tongue would hit the retainer and be grossed out. I thought about it in a way of this is what all the other girls just do! It is that time! I never thought about just waiting. The girls in my middle school around me were already giving blow jobs to my knowledge and I couldn’t even fathom a penis going into the theme park that was my mouth. My fun retainer, braces and more! What a nightmare. And among all these stories of touching and just letting them fondle everyone I never even heard of oral sex being cool to do to women until my early years in college. Everything was for the boys.

The sad part is my friend’s voices were more powerful than my own mom. I wanted to be wanted and if it meant all these tasks than I was going to throw myself into it. My mom is no idiot either she did the best she could getting us on birth control and reminding us we don’t have to indulge in anything we don’t want to. But it was the cool thing to do and in middle school I wanted that. I quickly began my hardest to play it cool and be the chill girl. Being a chill girl was letting someone put their hands in your pants, or put your hand on their penis while you shared a couch and you would do them a solid. I never once questioned it. Losing your virginity was considered cool, it always has been considered cool. It was rare I would meet people that were confidentially not wanting to lose it. I started to think terrible things about myself because I was a virgin. I was telling myself I am fat, ugly, I will never find love. All these thoughts over sex. I watched all my friends lose their virginity before me and at a certain point I was just dreading it, I just wanted it to be over. These thoughts were coming to me in the body of a 16 year old girl which is still so early for any person to be losing their virginity looking back on it. These kind of thoughts lead way for plenty of mistakes on both sides.

I wish I could just go back and tell myself I was enough and when it happens, it happens but instead It took me six years after the incident of losing my virginity to accept it to myself that it was actually not consensual. The story is that I had to babysit and my close friend was having a house party that same night. The minute the parents I babysat for relieved me from my duty I raced to my friend’s house to catch up on the partying. Partying was a big thing to do for teenagers bored in suburbia. I get to the house and all my friends were already intoxicated.  All I remember is everyone screaming to take shots and another friend handing me a xanax. We were all hanging out and having fun and then someone sent me into the garage to grab something with a guy. Then someone shut the door on us and in the dark we start kissing. We decided to go somewhere else and then I find myself periodically coming in and out of a blackout in my friend’s room, and suddenly someone else walks in on us and asks if it is me, they say, “Is that Katie?” I had no idea what was happening. Then I hear the guy on top of me saying he didn’t know my name. I fall asleep and wake up in the same room the next day, alone with a bookshelf blocking her door. It felt like a bad dream to be honest.  I walked outside onto the patio and all my friends and mutual friends were screaming that I hooked up with him. People were congratulating me. Then one of the guys could see a hint of sadness in my face. Without skipping a beat he goes, “Yo, he’s a cool dude, he’s really chill.” Then everyone backed that statement up. “Oh, for sure…” I said. I then pulled someone into a room and got his number. I needed to know if he even used a condom. I felt shitty. I felt like it was my fault, I took drugs and alcohol. “Way to blow it Katie,” I thought.

I texted this guy, just “Hey, this is Katie. We had sex.” When I finally got a text back it read something like, “Oh yeah. Last night was pretty fun and crazy but I think I am going to get back with my ex.” That stung a bit cause I didn’t know if I even liked him either. Hurt and trying to be chill again I just asked one last thing, “Well did you use a condom?” All he said was, “I think you should get a plan B to be safe.” Then no more texts, not even a little “Hey, do you need money to help buy that?” I remember going to Planned Parenthood with my friend behind my parents back. I get it and just decided in my head this wasn’t crazy behavior. “This is just what sex is like for a girl in her TEEN YEARS. Some of my other friends had similar experiences and it sucks he is back with his ex but I should just move on, my virginity is gone and I should be glad even though I don’t remember it,” I thought.

Those next six years I ended up going for guys that usually didn’t deserve me. I spent nights on friend’s couches sharing futons with guys and sometimes I would wake up with a guy’s hand down my pants. One time I woke up because a guy stuck his finger into my asshole (Sorry dad if you read this!) and put my hand on his penis. This guy was someone I thought was into another friend of mine but we shared a futon in the same room as seven other people and he did that. I had friends even tell me similar things would happen to them. I let guys treat me really terribly with the exception of one solid boyfriend I briefly had before college. I ended up breaking his heart though being emotionally unavailable and unable to take love seriously. This was absolutely why I drank so heavily in college and I finally got to a point where I despised the idea of dating and I took a year off sex and finally went to a therapist one day after a close friend of mine passed away and I was feeling lost. The therapist was able to help me build the courage up to tell my mom. It was crystal clear at that point I should have told her years before but I didn’t know why I felt so bad. I thought my parents would judge me.

My therapist also tried to help me find peace in the fact I don’t remember it and I should be happy I don’t. I feel like that is all she knew she could say just a handful of years ago. It didn’t really solve my problem with whether or not it was something I should report. Do I report the guys that randomly decided to touch me in the night? It made life feel heavy with how grey these things can be. People don’t realize the trauma that comes with incidents like these. I wasted so much time on drugs, sex and alcohol to numb myself from believing I was actually in pain and needing to get my feelings out about my experience. If there was ever someone that made me feel validated in being scared I would like to think my life would have been very different in those earlier years. I think about the guy that took my virginity and where he may be today and if I had the balls to publically out him like Dr. Ford and my peers in their situations. It would be hard because I was under the influence and at the time I socially brought up to beg for sexual favors and someone to just take my virginity. Did I want to be thrown in a room with a bookshelf blocking the door in a black out? No! But how drunk was he? I didn’t know, “No,” was not an option ever. I am happy that there is conversation around these topics. Things should be consensual. We shouldn’t have to wait for someone to kiss us and they shouldn’t be just trying to force themselves on you either. I have been hit on by guys in many higher ranking job titles than mine at places I have worked in the past and I didn’t want them to feel bad for liking me so I went along with it. I have avoided going places to make the guy feel better and have definitely had people tell me it took balls to show up place due to his feelings. I have even been strung along to the point of someone even telling me “I just feel like you will really like me and if you see me leave a bar with another girl tomorrow you will be upset.” Ouch, right? How did I let that crush get to that point, also that is a bold statement when more than half the women in the world don’t climax during sex. Why do guys get brought up to feel like they can say and do anything to women? We aren’t asking for much.

We didn’t have a path to follow before now. If you had unwanted contact you had to just blow it off and move on. Now, you can’t touch people without knowing in your head that it is wrong. You can’t use your children as an excuse for you being a changed person. The same people that want children are the same people grabbing women all the time and if you want kids you should set a God damn example and not be a creep like our president, or the other handful of male celebrities who have used their power to take advantage of women.  If you bring someone home and they are acting nervous around you, ask them what they need. Don’t assume they want sex ever. If someone outwardly says they don’t want your attention then back off. It is time to keep opening it up because it is exhausting and it should be as painful as it was for all these people that have felt victimized for so long. If someone seems blacked out they need a friend not a hookup. The conversations are just starting so buckle up because we are going into another year of the Metoo movement.

-Bowman

Time

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”

-Lucille Ball
 

As a person coming to the end of her twenties, I am constantly trying to figure out what to do with my time. Recently, I have been asked, “How do you have time to do all the things you do?” Or I have been told, “I do not know how you work your day job and still do comedy or art in the evening.” These statements and questions trigger the self love bones in my body and I want to reach out and say that everyone is capable of doing everything they want and more. I quoted Lucille Ball because she was the first woman to ever run a production company. She also was the first comedic influence for me as a child and I am always inspired by my memories of watching her show with the women in my family. I ask all my readers to please dive in and learn more about her work ethic because she is absolutely fabulous. Here is some life hacks that have helped me plow through my days.

Limit your Netflix and Chill

If you are watching more than six hours of television a week you can work on a project. I am guilty of indulging in netflix, Hulu, HBO, PRIME and all the things as much as the next guy or gal but whenever I am watching any show I find myself feeling a pit of guilt if I don’t make myself do at least three tasks before, after or during. I like to treat television like a reward. It is so fun to fantasize over the characters and plots we watch but don’t forget about your own plot is worth developing too.

Exercise.

Don’t be a dumbass, run Forest! RUN!

Audiobooks.

Books are great and I love a good book on a plane, by the pool, or before bed but when your life is crazy it can be its own task to finish one. Sometimes I can’t keep my eyes open after work and gigs. My dad asks me what books I am reading every time we talk on the phone and lately I have been utilizing audiobooks. I felt guilty because I felt like I am getting off easy but as a person with dyslexia, ADHD, and a busy schedule I decided to embrace it. I have a dog that needs tons of long walks and you can lose yourself in a good book while walking for miles. Cleaning your house is not so bad when you’re listening to a good book or podcast. Traffic sucks but not when you have a book, go ahead, let that person in your lane. Get rid of that road rage. ALSO, TREES (that’s a long stretch, I know but come on it counts). Reading is great but if you ever want to do more with your time, pump it up with an audiobook. Audible is also dope as fuck because you can get your first book free and send books to friends!

Sleep.

I don’t know how some people can get away with a few hours of sleep each night but you do you! I need all the sleep I can get because I have hypothyroidism and a underactive thyroid makes for a sassy monster. Also, The American Sleep Association says adults should get seven to nine hours of sleep a night and why settle for less when statistics are saying you deserve more, treat your damn self. Nine hours of sleep a day living is a perfect world version of me though, we all have lines we have to cross. Sometimes there is a gig that starts at 11:00 pm at night and the old day job starts early. If you lose sleep one night, try and get some rest in the next day, stay in and maybe watch a movie (Perfect time to reward yourself for doing a task like I said above. If you can go the extra mile, make something). FOMO is real but you have to take care of yourself when 50-70 Million people in America suffer from some kind of sleep disorder (Assoc et al., 2018).” losing sleep leads to a bunch of nasty medical problems and you aren’t your best self when you are tired but don’t worry, I will never tell you that you look tired cause that is rude as fuck. I can tell you that knowing when something is in your best interest is a huge part of life and we are all bad at it sometimes. You want to say yes to everything but ask yourself if it is making your life better or worse. Lastly, try napping. It is better for you than caffeine and it is a great way to reset. Be sure to not sleep more than an hour and have fun! Dream big baby!

Friends, Family and lovers.

The nuclear family doesn’t owe you anything. If someone is verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive in your family, you don’t need them in your life. There is a long history of people having to pick up members of their family in America when in reality some members cause many levels of trauma to an individual. We are living in a corrupt time again and you don’t owe anyone in your family more love than you are giving yourself. Ask yourself if this person is worth the work. If a person is taking from your life physically and emotionally you have a right to find a new group of people to surround yourself with and call family.

As far as friends go, I have been terrible at managing people worth my time since I was a child. My sister and mother used to always tell me that some of the friends I would beg to go hang out with were trash. Deep down I probably knew it and I am so thankful for their words to echo through my older years because many of those people have left my side. I find myself hesitating to embrace new friendships sometimes and I wouldn’t say it is bad. It is only because my time is precious to me. I think you should always treat everyone with the respect they deserve but you can’t go into a friendship assuming you are the best of friends right off the back. I don’t know why but assumed friendship runs strong in stand up. I have been the bad guy in this. I have been the person so eager to just be a part of a group that I forgot to just respectfully introduce myself and give them time to know me. Now that I am furthering my career I can tell you introducing yourself is a huge part of being successful. Successful in any career. That goes for the other side of it too, introduce yourself to the new people that come into your life. It is easy to forget how hard it can be to meet people. To the people saying it is hard to meet people as you get older, please save yourself the lonely road and reach out. Nothing about your age defines when you can have friends and you never know when a loved one will leave you. Treat your friends like beautiful plants, if you don’t tend to it with love and check in, consider that friendship a dead one. We all fall out of these but if you feel like you want to reach back out, do it! Start there and then try and see if the friendship feels as it always was. Don’t just text someone you haven’t reached out to in years and expect them to turn their life around for you. People that forget their credit card at brunch, never offer to pay for gas or to split a lyft, talk at you instead of with you, hook up with the person you were openly trying to pursue etc… These are not your friends. I am guilty of relating in my own experiences and I have learned over the years sometimes you should just listen and not give your two cents.

Finally. Love, it is a beast. I was single for the first eight years of my late teen years and twenties willingly. I knew that I never wanted to settle for someone that was not making my life easier. I just didn’t know how to date without a pursuit. I had tons of fun and don’t regret it but I wish I didn’t get as hung up on getting that dick sometimes. It happens when that is the fad of people in their twenties. Living in a world of Tinder and OKCupid can feel very robotic. You end up letting sex and lust get in the way of your own focus and if you read my first blog, you can end up falling down a wormhole of depression. Depression is real and consuming. If you don’t have a way to help treat it, then it becomes even more of a battle. I found myself “dating down” in my early twenties. I would date guys that I knew I wouldn’t want to be in the long run with. Turns out, they also don’t want that a lot of the time too, or you end up hurting people. I met my current boyfriend in person at an open mic. I decided to ask him out because I was constantly feeling inspired by his work. Inspiration is a good sign in dating! Some other good signs, someone that you want to see do well, someone that supports your stupid ideas, someone that helps you with your own work, chores and makes your life easier dammit! If the person you are dating pokes fun at your appearance, your intelligence or tries to fuck with you daily and play a wondering game of when you should text back maybe this person is a bad fling and you should have a talk.

You should be lifting everyone up in your life and not down. If someone is asking for more than you can give, see if they are worth it. You only have one life and you don’t want to spend it with assholes and moochers.

I am going to wrap all of this up by just saying everyone is capable of a lot. Love yourself and remember whether you are spending your time becoming super successful in your career or having a cool family or doing both, you can make time for extra if you want it. Don’t diss yourself by saying you never do anything, everyone has a different path. Try not to use “I have been so busy,” as an excuse because everyone is busy and can make cuts to make more time for their lives. Don’t doubt yourself and put yourself in a box. Get off your phone when you are with your friends and family. Remind yourself to think about what your currently doing and ask yourself if that is a good use of time.

I sure hope this was helpful.

Thanks!

Bowman

Reference

Assoc, A., Sleep, A., Disorders, S., Treatments, S., Professionals, F., News, S., ASA, A. and Products, S. (2018). Insomnia Sleep Apnea Narcolepsy Snoring - Research & Treatments | ASA. [online] American Sleep Assoc. Available at: https://www.sleepassociation.org/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018].

Hello World

Hello! 2018 is the year I start a blog. I decided my first post should be a little introduction of who I am and how I came to be where I am now.

It has been just a little over four years of going off my ADHD medication and I have never felt more calm and collected. I was a mess when I started comedy but it was part of the journey to saving my mind's ability to focus energy in a productive way. When I went off of my amphetamines I was currently prescribed 60 mg of Vyvanse and an additional 20 mg of Adderall instant release tablets if I needed it. It is a lot but it was a long process of changing doses and scripts for a long sixteen years since I was initially diagnosed. I was diagnosed with ADHD not even that old, just about four to five years old in Dallas, Texas. People may think my parents were crazy for letting a doctor medicate a child so young but it was part of the trend during the 90s. Teachers still had a lot of say in what parents were prescribing their children and my mom felt defeated having three children to balance while my dad was always away for work. "Did Katie take her medication today?" They would ask, and being a wild child prior, my argument to not take it never held up. The feeling of being on and off medication as a child felt like you are present and then you are a robot. I just did what I was told, my parents were amazing at putting us in various academic explorations and with a decent amount of privilege. I was swept away by becoming an artist. A funny one, but it was always confusing having your personality go back and forth between medicated and not. When I was off medication I was free and crazy. Laughing attacks were every moment of the day and you could not hold this girl down. I was the fart queen and class clown. Medicated, I was just a ball of feelings wrapped up in a blank face. I continued to make art and stay in the mindset that I would just be an art teacher one day because the only cool teachers to me at the time were the art teachers.

Fast forward to four years ago when I had the epiphany that I wanted to change my life and stop taking ADHD medication. I was a year out of college and I was denied a letter of recommendation I needed for art graduate school (two weeks before the due date). It was a letter from a particular mentor I adored, loved and respected and even though it broke my heart and left me feeling helpless it did not feel malicious. I mean, I definitely already paid for all my applications so I was thinking to myself, "wow, could she have just done this a little earlier?" But that is how creative mentors in art school can be, everything is done with harsh criticism. A lot of my friends and colleagues said she was insane for doing that but I took her letter of why she declined to heart instead. I am a sucker for brutal notes. I had a few other mentors tell me they would write one for me but she had such a close eye on me for the last couple of years prior, deep down, I knew it. She was right. She said I needed to wait because I wasn't ready for graduate school and my portfolio reflected that. My portfolio was all over the place at the time which was reflective of my mind. I never truly had control of my goals, I just followed what my parents and every scholastic influence around me pushed for. All my peers in art school at the time made it seem like taking time off between undergraduate school and graduate programs was a bad idea.

Simultaneously, I had been spending my spare time with friends or exploring Tinder and OKCupid as well as holding onto an intimate friendship of blurred lines down in Austin, Texas. This guy we will refer to as Texas, hit me in all the feels. I had just moved to Denver from Boulder and was all alone so why not try to get laid. It was maddening, the pool of people you mindlessly go out with and I was just comparing them to a Mr. Texas who was not worth my time when it came to intimacy. I met him through a friend I would stay with when visiting childhood friends in Austin, Texas. After hanging out with him and his friends we ended up all staying in touch, it was around the same time I just was exposed to the show, Broad City and I was so excited about it I tried to recommend it to one of his friends and he just said, "No way, I am sick of girls that are not hot trying to be funny." Of course it blew up into a huge fight and will continue to haunt me. How could anyone say that? I immediately began thinking garbage thoughts like, "Well, if his friends say the girls on Broad City (WHO ARE GENIUS AND BEAUTIFUL) aren't pretty or funny, what does he think of me? This is a toxic way of thinking but at the time it was the only reality I knew. I still tried to argue him and there was no convincing which led to me to fall away from vapid friends like that. “This punk isn’t even the guy I am into, why am I trying to convince an idiot. I know what I think is funny,” is what I reminded myself. I felt alone again and was drinking a lot and just plowing through more dates. My girlfriends would hit me up after nights of going out dancing and tell me what I did. “You stormed off the dance floor and left us at the bar.” I was not enjoying anything anymore. I hated that I dealt with my friends that way, it wasn’t who I wanted to be. I always identified as the fun one before and now I was close to losing them.

I finally went on a date with an comedic improviser. I had never seen improv before and immediately just thought, this is wonderful. It was a whole different way of creating something fun and wonderful. “Wow, it is fun,” I thought to myself. All my life I wanted to make funny stuff with my art but it always just came out conceptual and nobody wants to buy conceptual art of hairy vaginas or prints of my HPV cells on Etsy. Maybe now, but not in 2013 (sadly so). The date ended and I wanted to go sign up for classes the next day but I knew I would see that guy and I didn’t want to step on his toes (lame). I ended up dating again and falling back down the rabbit hole of depression and you can only get so far into online dating until you meet the one. The one that slaps you in the face and wakes you up from the nightmare that is yourself! Let’s call him Ted. Ted had a very similar taste in music, art, film and mental illness as me. “We both have anxiety disorder! Yay! He will know my depression and anxiety so well. Finally someone that gets me.” So toxic but we fell fast and hard into a sexual exchange of sex and drunken nights. This is what I thought was as close to love as I could get at the time and I remember after one stupid night of hanging out and showing him my favorite comedy I spilled the beans about that date where I went to an improv show. I said, "it would be silly if I did it and I would feel like a dick if I saw the improviser I went on a date with." So stupid (I know). “You should just do it,” Ted said. I laughed and then my laughter trailed off into silence because he was right and it made me feel sick. We went to bed and the next day Ted kissed me goodbye saying he was going out of town for a convention of Magic the Gathering. I had to convince him to tell me that is where he was going (which if he really liked me, he probably would have told me) cause he was so embarrassed. Ironically, I thought to myself, “Why is he embarrassed, if  he is making money off a stupid game?” We really got each other, right?

I didn’t hear back from Ted for two weeks and at the time I was so shocked that he ghosted me. "I was making him laugh so much! I felt like the dick was in the bag," I thought to myself. Turns out you can talk at people  and they think what they want to say but your personality can really steamroll if it is not meant to be. That is why a couple "What do you think?" Statements are healthy. Anyway,  it was clear I had no choice but to sign up for classes and a sign that dating was going bad and I need to move onto better things. I signed up for my first improv class with my friend, Becca and I had a blast. The idea of saying yes translated into everything. I didn’t realize how much I was saying no to my heart. I look back on my adolescence and remember how I talked about how much I love to make people laugh in all my journals, artwork and even the stupid youtube channel from my Myspace days that I can’t figure out the password for so I can delete it. In all of it, I was trying but had no idea how. I even have a firm memory of pretending to do stand up on a stool in my friend’s room while her and my other pal laid in bed watching me. I made some remark of getting my period cause that is what I saw on TV and when my two friends laughed I actually told them to shut up out of embarrassment (HA). The prescriptions that guided me through a life of depression were just manipulating the way I wanted to express myself. When I would find something fun to talk about as a child like farting or just a silly thought it would make me feel suddenly shy of explaining it. Finally being off these scripts for a solid chunk of time was starting to open up my confidence and mood.

After a few months into improv, I got convinced to do an open mic and steadily became in love with stand up. I loved improv and it gave me stage confidence and the ability to be silly, fail (Like fucking bomb) and be okay with that in front of a live audience. o be real though, stand up finally began to feel like I was sharing my story and connecting with people. I met people like my dear friend, Miriam who let me put her name down as a reference for my application to my current day job and now I have a solid day job at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in the Arvada health center. It is not art related but when I leave, it is not coming with me except for my undeniable care for reproductive health rights. I have worked with many amazing women that have inspired me in comedy and performing in so many ways. I am so lucky to still have my close friends from college and before. The people that saw my ugly side and stuck with me. I could list them all now but that would be a wonderful blog for later. I am blessed (even though I hate that word) to not lose them or even my family through my healing, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t check my privilege for that. I am so lucky to even have met my first boyfriend without even trying. I just told myself, “you are going to walk right up to him tonight and buy him and beer.” Now, we have been together for almost a year and the old me would have never just said yes to opening up my heart in the ways I have for this lucky guy.

One of my mentors in college, Melanie Yazzie was hilarious and amazing. She taught me so much about sharing autobiographical work and she also did write me a rec letter for the record. Yazzie always believed in me though to say the least and THAT is another worthy blog read but for now, let’s just say learning that you are not for everyone is important in all aspects of life. She once said, “Why make stuff about everything else when you have your own story? When you die, you will just be dead and nobody has the ability to tell your story like you, that is why it is your gift to share.” I take this with me in my heart wherever I go on stage or when I still make art. It really holds up.

Thank you.

Bowman