Catharsis Through Creativity.

This has been a big week. For the country, for our collective sanity, and for Bernie memes. How good does it feel to have social media feeds filled with fluffy memes rather than yet another humanitarian crisis? While I’m breathing a sigh of relief along with so many others, I’ve also reconnected with a familiar...

Quarantine: A Love Story

In an era unlike any other in our collective experience, I’ve found personal solace in storytelling. Consuming and creating stories—as a way to commiserate, learn, and sometimes, to escape.  Last March my career as a music photographer disappeared before my eyes. It was terrifying and demoralizing and brought on an existential crisis, making me question...

Invisible Illness: Heartbreak, Healing and Being Enough

I’ve been sick for nearly a decade. But it’s only been in the past two months, since I have finally recovered, that I have come to understand the depth of the ramifications of having an invisible illness. So to all those who suffer from invisible pain, I hope that this makes you feel a little...

Sharisse Coulter Has Awkward Conversations (So You Don’t Have To)

https://youtu.be/zqhCkWwzurw I started a web series of interviews with my friends from diverse backgrounds as a way to resist the current administration's attempts to divide us. There are a lot of challenging conversations to be had and we don't all have to come from the same backgrounds or even ever agree on everything. What we...

Want to Have Better Sex? #MeToo

In this MeToo/Time’s Up era and especially since the Aziz Ansari story broke, there has been a lot of discussion about the distinctions between sexual harassment, assault, rape and impropriety of varying degrees. These are important distinctions and I hope much thoughtful conversation goes into parsing them out. But I want to talk about where...

It Starts With You

I've been thinking a lot these last few days about the state of the world and what we can do about it. And then a friend challenged me to come up with THE solution. Rather than dismiss it as merely an insane idea, I took my own advice: I tried. It's not THE answer. There's...

I Had a Sleepover at a White Supremacist’s. Here’s What I Learned.

When I was in third grade I had a sleepover at a white supremacist’s house. His daughter and I were school friends and she invited me over. I didn’t know who her dad was, but I did know that she and I both liked tetherball and reading. That was more than enough for eight-year old...

Thanks Trump (and the GOP) For Setting Me Free

"The system didn’t work for me. I am on my own. And because of that I can stop lessening myself in order to preserve their egos. I can stop laughing at their sexist jokes. I can be opinionated and intelligent and talented and unladylike and even (gasp!) gain or lose weight and still like myself. I can dress up or wear pajamas all day. I can do whatever I goddamn please because I. Am. Free."

The Girl in the Turquoise Shirt

When I was in high school I spent a week in Tijuana, Mexico building houses for poor people. That trip changed me. Or more precisely, one little girl in a turquoise shirt did. My boyfriend’s church group was going over spring break and they needed more volunteers, preferably who could speak Spanish. I volunteered. Admittedly,...

Radical Empathy

I did the one thing this Thanksgiving none of us were supposed to do: talk politics. I engaged with a white male Trump supporter. I did not do it out of anger. I did not tell him he was wrong. I did not see him as my enemy. Instead, I challenged myself to see his...