Browsing Tag

teri carter

Guest Posts, #metoo, Sexual Assault/Rape

Why We Don’t Tell

December 6, 2017
telling

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

By Teri Carter

Monday afternoon, I got blackout drunk.

I did not intend to get blackout drunk. I did not intend to drink at all, but I emerged from my home office to see Beverly Young Nelson telling her Roy Moore story and holding up her high school yearbook.

I poured a glass of wine. It was 4:00 in the afternoon.

By 5:30, I’d re-watched Ms. Nelson’s presser several times, tossed the first bottle in the recycling bin and opened another. I don’t remember much after that. I vaguely remember breaking my wine glass and being pissed that my husband was trying to clean up the glass before my dogs, including our 4 month-old, black lab puppy, got into it and got hurt.

I remember my husband leaving for his school board meeting, angrily saying, “I’m afraid to leave you here by yourself, maybe I should stay home,” and me being defiant, belligerent. “Oh my god, I’m fine, go!” I remember being relieved to see his car pull out of the driveway so I could keep re-watching that press conference, and keep drinking.

Looking back, it was the way Ms. Nelson talked about her neck — the way she described Mr. Moore putting his hands on her head and her neck, the force and the fear she felt from him — trying to push her face into his crotch. Continue Reading…

Abortion, Birth Control, Choice, Guest Posts

The Choice

July 20, 2016
Abortion

By Teri Carter

On January 22, 1973, by a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court overturned a Texas law and made abortion legal in the United States. Roe v. Wade stated that a woman had the choice to end a pregnancy in early months without legal restriction, and with restrictions in later months. This ruling was based on her right to privacy.

In the years before Roe v. Wade, my mother gave birth to 3 children: in 1965, 1968 and 1972. Her first 2 pregnancies began without a husband, which in the 1960s meant she had to get married twice to men she should never have even considered marrying. My mother did not have the option of ending her pregnancies. She also did not have access to birth control, though Enovid, the first birth control pill approved by the FDA, had been on the market since 1960, and by 1965 was being used by 6.5 million American women.

The Pill was only accessible to married women, and would not be legally available to single women for 7 more years. The Pill would never be approved by the Catholic Church. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Divorce

How To Be Divorced: A Stepdaughter’s Wish List

June 1, 2016
divorce

By Teri Carter

When asked, “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I might give any of the following answers: only child, oldest of 3, or oldest of 5. All true. This is what it means to be a stepdaughter.

1,300 new stepfamilies are created every day. I am a statistic, a stepdaughter three times over, starting at ages 2, 9, and 15, with two half-brothers, a stepbrother and a stepsister. Everyone offers advice. Over the years I’ve heard dozens of opinions from the well-intentioned about how divorced parents and new stepparents should and should not behave. Most get it wrong.

If anyone, including my own parents, had asked, this is what I would have told them. Continue Reading…

Binders, feminism, Guest Posts

The Man in My House

June 23, 2015

By Teri Carter

The first thing he shows me is his ID badge, his authenticity.  The badge hangs around his neck on a new blue lanyard but the ID itself is hidden inside a thick plastic case with white spots where his eyes are supposed to be.  He holds up the badge.  “I’m showing you my badge,” he almost whispers.  And when I don’t acknowledge the badge, don’t acknowledge that he is who he says he is, he holds it higher, closer to my face.  “This is my badge, see.” And I say yes, yes I see it, yes I see you, sure, come on in, even though all I can really make out is the worn plastic case.  The evil-seeming, white, rubbed out, ghost spots for his eyes.  How many times, I wonder, do I let a strange man — a man I don’t know, a man I’m not sure about, feel odd about, a man who strikes me as not-right-to-be-here-with-me-alone – into my house?

I am reading The Burning by Jane Casey.  The story of woman detective after a serial killer.  I have not read a book like this in more than 20 years, and I still remember the exact moment, the exact night, I knew I could no longer read books like this. I was in my bed in my apartment under a flowered navy blue bedspread.  It was after midnight.  The lamp beside me cast a round shadow on the ceiling above as I read the true crime story of Jeffrey MacDonald murdering his family.  I remember thinking, ‘what dad butchers his entire family?”  I remember setting Fatal Vision down, forever unfinished, and turning out the light.  And sometime that following week, I buried that book in the bottom of my trash and took the trash out.  I could not read it, but even more I could not even have the story of this man in my house. Continue Reading…

Binders, death, Guest Posts

The Standalone Gift

March 18, 2015

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black1-300x88By Teri Carter.

I first saw the chair in a catalogue, the kind we all get too many of with thick red and green pages, the kind that land in our mailboxes before the holidays with a thud, the kind of shiny wish-book that draws us, even if reluctantly, into its pages in search of the elusive perfect gift.

The chair caught my eye. It was almost Christmas, my mother’s last, and she was so puffy and swollen from the steroids she hated to see herself in the mirror. She mostly complained about not being able to cook, that she “couldn’t even stand up long enough to boil soup.” She’d tried pulling up a chair but the sitting/standing/sitting/standing routine wore her out, and she’d cried on the phone with me, “I feel like I’m just waiting.” When I saw the chair I saw a solution: this adjustable, portable, ladder-like contraption was just what my mother needed. I got out my credit card and dialed 1-800.

No matter our age, it’s so hard to understand what our mothers need. Looking back, I wonder if I ever stopped staring into my own mirror—worrying about some weight I’d gained or a bad haircut or the wrong clothes—long enough to care. There would be time for that later, right? Later, there would be time?

When I was eight, I discovered my single mother was having an affair. Let’s call him Jack. Jack was married with two little kids and worked nights as a delivery driver for Purolator, a FedEx-like company, and he lived in our very small town in a nice ranch-style house you could see from the main road. Sometimes my mother and I would drive by on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to see if he might, by chance, be outside mowing the lawn or washing the car or even throwing the football with his son. Jack never waved, never acknowledged my mother or me in any way, and we didn’t wave either, but I swore I could see Jack tip his head a little and I felt my mother slow the car just a bit and, with that slowing, I felt the electricity that passed in the space between them. Continue Reading…

Eating Disorders/Healing, Eating/Food, Guest Posts, Self Image, Truth

The Skinny on Mary.

January 3, 2015

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black1-300x88

By Teri Carter.

Mary is skinny. Mary has a trick. Mary shows up late for lunch, which means she has no time to order or no time to eat. Both work. Mary’s just turned 50 and she is always talking food: You would not believe what I stuffed in my face at that barbecue! Your bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is in danger. I’m ordering a cheeseburger and fries! But Mary, who owns an investment firm, is an expert at moving her food around a round plate and she always gets a to-go box for her barely-touched burger and fries. Can’t wait to pound this down at midnight. She thinks we believe her, so we pretend we do. We all have our tricks.

In an August 2012 article for Forbes, Lisa Quast quotes a research study: 45 to 61 percent of top male CEOs are overweight, compared to only 5 to 22 percent of top female CEOs. Then, in her closing paragraph, Ms. Quast goes inexplicably blasé: “As for me, I’m off to the gym with my husband for weight training and a two mile run. Then I’ll probably have a veggie salad for dinner so I can keep my body mass index at the low end of the normal range. As these studies demonstrate, thin is in for executive women – although I’d prefer to think if it as ‘healthy’ being in.” Her ending leaves me cold. I go back to the beginning.

Continue Reading…

death, Grief, Guest Posts

I Miss My Mother Most At Five O’Clock.

November 28, 2014

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black

 By Teri Carter.

I miss my mother most at five o’clock.

When I was a kid and came home after school, the TV was my babysitter— Gilligan’s Island at 3:30 followed by The Brady Bunch followed by The Partridge Family—until five o’clock came and it was time to do the few chores my mother had given me (as fast as possible) before she got home. I stayed with my grandparents in the summers. My mother would pick me up after work, but would sit for a spell at the kitchen table with my grandmother, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and gossiping, until we went home, just the two of us. As a teenager, I would dink around with friends after school, knowing I had to be home by five, that my mother would be waiting for me to help her with supper. It was our time, our hour or two in the kitchen, before her new farmer husband came in from working in the field and the night became all about him.

I miss my mother most at five o’clock. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, healing, storytelling

People You May Know.

October 12, 2014

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black By Teri Carter.

I carry a myth. In the myth, I am 36 years old, and I meet my father at my mother’s funeral. Or, rather, at her wake. It is the designated family hour from three until four p.m., the one quiet span when only close family gathers to see the dead. The viewing, they call it. My mother in her casket, the casket she chose. And there is my father, a bearded stranger, pacing between rows of metal folding chairs, viewing her.

I actually met my father around my 18th birthday. His mother lived in my town, and though I’d had little to no contact with her over the years, she’d sent me a card with money in it for my high school graduation and, in lieu of writing her a thank you note, I called. She was thrilled, she said, to hear from me, and I remember feeling her warmth through the phone, the idea of her grandmotherly embrace, and somewhere during that call she asked if I’d like to come for a visit to look at some family photos and I asked where my father was and I said it rather boldly like, “Do you know where Lee Roy is these days?” feeling all grown up at age 18 and out of high school, and she said he was living right there in town, “right up the road!” and would I like to meet him, maybe next Sunday, at her house?

But what happened then? What of the details? Did he arrive first or did I? Did we shake hands, hug, stand back, study? Did we share a meal, a laugh, a Coca Cola? How can I not recall? How does a girl not remember meeting her father, not remember hearing his voice, for the very first time? And yet, the edges, they are so watery.

I met my father at my mother’s funeral. We shook hands. He pulled a business card from his wallet and wrote his number on the back in blue, ballpoint ink. He said, “Call us next time you’re in town,” and as he walked away I wondered, who is us?

Continue Reading…