Originally intended to simply focus on book reviews, over time, KaliDesautelsReads has morphed into its own entity.
I write about issues that are near to my heart, be they political, feminist, motherhood, mental health, or, as the title holds, books.
A thirty-something Canadian woman in my mid-thirties, I have been “super married” to my high school sweetheart since 2006, and together we have two crazy, clever, kind, hilarious, wonderful kids.
My first book – How Not To Blog: Finding Myself, One Post at a Time is available on Amazon (in eBook formats for you clever tech readers, and paperback for those of us who love that new book smell!)
I have tried a podcast – it’s still on Apple and Google Podcasts – but writing is where my heart is.
My life changed dramatically when my husband was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in 2018, and I am now a writer for a leading Canadian Cancer Non-Profit.
I am lucky enough to have a family that loves me and pushes me to be my best, even if it is outside of my cushiony comfort zone. I have a village of friends that nourish me, mentally, and spiritually.
Welcome to my thoughts. Sit down. Stay a while. Enjoy a cup of coffee!
Double tap if you are ever afraid to feel good about yourself, proud of yourself, pretty, smart, etc. for fear of being thought arrogant. Like if you have thought that you do not DESERVE to feel that way about yourself because you are “too skinny”, “too fat”, “too short”, “too tall”, etc.
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You know what? Who gets to decide how you feel about yourself? Some random? A friend who is suffering her own insecurities? Your parents? Who? Who do you consider to be “the boss of you”? If the answer is “none of the above”, then why do other people get to decide how you feel about yourself??
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I’ll tell you what, though – 9 times out of 10, no one else is thinking those things that you are afraid that they are thinking. And that one out of ten chance? Guess what? That person is a jerk! Or suffering their own insecurities and projecting, because the things that we most judge in others are the things that we think about ourselves. So stop worrying about what anyone else thinks. Start feeling good about yourself. Start loving yourself. Don’t love yourself conditionally. Don’t love yourself “when”, love yourself NOW! Because who the frack cares, you guys, what ANYONE else thinks about you? Especially since far fewer people are concerned about your stuff. They are way more concerned about themselves, too.
Everyday I have choices: to sleep in, or wake up early, to drink coffee or water, to cuddle my kids or play on my phone, to work or rest, etc. Everyday I have a choice in my attitude as well – this isn’t as straightforward though. I used to think that self help and inspirational quotes were beautiful but not for me. I didn’t think I could grow or achieve things. I didn’t list goals or focus on dreams, or even have plans for the future, because I didn’t see any reason to. I was who and what I was and that was all there was to it.
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I learned something, though – that is called depression. Not sadness, not laziness, it is a Major Depressive Episode, and it was not something that happened once, it was a chronic and reoccurring disorder that took away my ability to make choices. The medication that I take everyday to keep my depression away also gives me the ability to make these choices everyday. My Cymbalta has allowed me to see my future as something big and bright and bold. It is what allows me to wake up in the morning and write down my goals for the day. I am not ashamed or afraid to admit that I choose to take this medication for a mental illness that I did not choose to have, and that is twice as likely to occur in women as in men, per MDSC.
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Everyday I have choices: I could choose to feel ashamed and hide my mental illness, or I can choose to end the stigma around mental illness by speaking my truth and hoping that at least one person feels less alone.
New Podcast on Tuesday October 9th!! There are links to all the available platforms scattered around this post!
You guys, I am so incredibly excited to have this podcast episode up and running! It’s so much fun and I really hope that you enjoy this week’s content!
On Tuesday, the third podcast episode for KaliDesautelsReads(WritesAndRants) will be up on @applepodcasts, @spotify, @stitcherpodcasts, @castbox_fm, #pocketcasts, #overcast, #radiopublic, @google, and #breaker. Tune in on your drive to work, and if you enjoy it, please subscribe and share it with your friends! It would mean soooooo much to me, you guys!!!
I have decided that I will arbitrarily implement my own standard of rightness and wrongness.
Lately, we have been told that as women, we are predisposed to lying. If ever a woman dares to come forward to tell the world, or heaven forbid, a law enforcement officer, or court tribunal that she was sexually assaulted, we cry foul. We say that she is a lying whore; we say that she is a slut; we say that she was asking for it; we say that it never happened and that she is an unreliable witness to the crime that she was victim to. So, as I have heard that now is a bad time for young men, and that the last millennia that have been a bad time for women has been nothing compared to the last year that men have “survived”, I have decided that I will just start lying. All of the time. About everything. Because, as a woman, I am determined to be a liar anyway. I might as well do it, if I am going to be accused of “probably making it up” to hurt someone else’s career, then I might as well really give it my all!
Picture this – a world where women never tell the truth; a world where we make things up all the time; a world where whatever we say is probably just said to wreck some poor man’s future. In this world, why bother just lying about sexual assault? That seems so small! We need to think bigger! Our lies and accusations need to be more audacious! Come on, ladies! We might as well be in for the whole thing – murder, fraud, robbery, insanity – let’s do this!!
Let’s start with a simple example – you are walking through a grocery store, with a child, allegedly your own, but who is to say for sure? I mean, that’s probably a lie that you made up in order to trick your man into staying with you! Anyway, you are in the grocery store with this random child, and the child picks up a candy and begins to eat it. You walk out of the store, with this sticky child and are stopped at the door by a security guard. The guard asks you if you intend to pay for the candy that is very clearly in the kid’s hand. You look at the child and then at the security guard and say with a smile “oh, I did!” and cheerfully continue to walk out. The guard stops you again, and asks for proof of purchase, and now you look at him quizzically and say “for what?” He gestures to the kid and the candy, and says “the candy that the child is eating”.
“What candy?” you ask sweetly. The guard will be mildly astonished, as you had just said that you had paid for it, and beyond that, it is quite clear from the grubby face and hands what candy he is referring to.
“The one that you said you paid for. The one that your kid is eating.”
“What are you talking about? I do not allow my children to eat candy under any circumstance.” You will say this last part from your holier-than-thou high horse. Remember, in this world, where we lie all the time about everything, the truth is irrelevant. We just play through.
“Ma’am, the guard will say, you have to pay for this candy. I cannot allow you to leave without paying for it.”
“I don’t want to pay for candy that I do not have.”
“Your child has it. They are eating it now!“
“What are you talking about? What child? What candy??” You will blink repeatedly at this point.
Remember, from now on, in this world where all women capriciously lie constantly, there is no need to feel guilty about the frustration or anger that you incite in any man, such as the store security guard in this scenario. You are looking to ensure that he cannot do his job, and ideally, that he will be fired and destroy all future prospects in his field. That is, after all, the end goal of all of our endeavours as women.
Let’s think bigger, ladies! Let’s think massive! Sexual assault is just one thing that we can lie and falsely accuse men about. It’s so salacious and tawdry. Imagine this – you decide that you will own a company. You may have worked hard your entire life in order to do this, but who are we kidding? You just slept your way to the top and probably don’t have any idea what you are doing. In fact, you probably stole your business start up loan from one of those hard done by young white men that we have heard so much about. Now is the time to save yourself some money. When it comes to tax season, you will look over your tax documents, create random numbers, and file them with pink glittery gel ink, because face it ladies, we always want to spend extra money on those pink pens “for her”, with that “pink tax” that we are always lying about. When you are told that you must legally use blue ink, make sure to argue that you absolutely did use blue ink. This tax officer is clearly lying to you. It doesn’t matter that you can see the pink and glitter right in front of you. You just maintain that it is, in fact, blue!!! You can tell him that he is lying to make you look bad. He is trying to destroy your company. You can tell him you do not actually own a company. You can gaslight the hell out of him. I leave it to your discretion. In fact, you could even turn it into a sexist issue – why does the ink need to be blue? You are female. You love pink, naturally. Or, you could accuse him of stereotyping that because you are female it is assumed that you used a pink, glittery gel pen?? Seriously, you go ahead and play it however you like. Just remember to ensure that you are a true member of the Lying Ladies population.
As I continue down this path – creditors may complain that I am deeply in debt, as I will just tell everyone that I have paid my bills, while doing whatever else I feel like doing. My boss will ask me to complete a project and I will tell him it has been done, and gaslight him when he says that I have not. What is a little crazy-making in the grande scheme of things? It is my nature as a woman to lie. My children’s teacher will ask me to come in for an interview about why Little Meghan is hitting children with chairs, and while I will reinforce strongly with Meghan that this is the right thing to do under all circumstances, when the teacher asks me about it, I will lie and ask what kind of person do they take me for?? What kind of mother would encourage her daughter to engage in such malicious and intentionally destructive behaviour?? When I hit my car into my coworker’s very expensive new vehicle, I will point to the dented, scratched area and ask him if it is really worth complaining about, as it could have been much worse. I could have ripped the doors off and slashed the tires, too! And besides, there’s no damage to my car, so who is the insurance company going to believe? It’s his word against mine, and there will be so much paperwork, and besides, I’m not the “type” of person who crashes into cars. I will carry on with my day.
Can’t you just see it? And imagine, exponentially, if in this world, it is not just you and me lying, but it is actually ALL women! We ALL do this ALL of the TIME! Imagine how crazy men would feel. Imagine the conversations they will have with their friends “well, it wasn’t that bad. Karen only lies about not making dinner. My sister Elaine lied herself into a CEO position and she regularly throws crowbars at my brother-in-law when he gets home. I mean what is he going to do about it? The one time she managed to hit him, she lied so much that he wasn’t even sure what they were talking about any more.” Why stop there? We can falsely accuse young, rich, white men of robbery, assault, murder, fraud!! There are so many more interesting and punishable crimes that we can lie about!! Sexual assault is just the tip of the iceberg, and besides, the laws on that suck, so there isn’t much strain on a man’s future pursuits.
So, ladies, what do you say? Are you with me? We can make our false accusations and lies a true way of life. We can sincerely fool all men, and destroy all potential for their future.
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I am grateful to anyone willing to speak up about this. And he is absolutely correct – the comments are filled with specific cases, that try to derail the whole thing. I’m so tired of the innate nonsensical desire to jump all over the defensiveness band wagon! Someone says “I was groped”, it is faced with “well, I would NEVER do that”; a child is mauled by a Rottweiler – “well, MY dog would NEVER do that”; a teenager viciously cyber bullies her friend to death – “well, MY daughter would NEVER do that!”
Stop it. That is enough. Congratulations – you literally are not who I was talking about. Because you or your dog or your husband or your kid would or would not do something does. Not. Mean. That. It. Does. Not. Happen.
It happens AS OFTEN AS IT EFFING RAINS IN NEW YORK CITY!!!
#believewomen #heforshe
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Kali J Desautels 