🌌 I wish I was brave enough to love 🌌

The journey starts with a “let’s pretend” game. As Hallel explains it, little sister Ya’ara wanted to play “parents.” Ya’ara decides that she’ll be the mommy, and Hallel will be the daddy. Hallel protests. Ya’ara insists: Hallel is a boy, and therefore must play daddy.

“But that doesn’t feel right,” Hallel says to Ari, between tears, “cause I’m a boy-girl.”

Shira, Hallel’s mother, says she copes well in a crisis. In that moment, she packaged the news away for later.

“I was like, ‘well, we love you whoever you are, give me a hug,’ ” Shira remembers telling Hallel.

For Ari, “it felt a little bit like getting up to the top of a rollercoaster, like, OK, now it's going to begin. I don’t know exactly what's going to happen next, but what I do know for sure is that this is happening.”

To clarify, Ari and Shira had known for some time that Hallel was not a traditional boy. If they bought action figures, Hallel preferred female characters. Hallel would watch fairy movies one day and draw dresses, then dress and act more like what they expected from a boy.

“For us that wasn’t a problem,” Ari says. “There’s lots of ways to be a boy and lots of ways to be a girl. But at the back of our mind it was confusing.”

Read the full piece here

Moss Point teacher’s Black History Month door went viral. Now she needs your help.

“Last week, Moss Point teacher Jovan Bradshaw posted a photo to Facebook that went viral. Now she’s using that momentum in hopes of raising money to teach her students more about Black History Month. …”

#BlackHistoryFact  - African American Inventor Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner is known for developing the sanitary pad  

MEFeater Magazine 

“She and her sister were both inventors, creating and patenting inventions for household use. Her sanitary belt wasn’t put into use until 30 years after she invented it because the company rejected her when they found out she was a Black woman.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenner

- @MythjaeComics

The Forgotten Black Woman Inventor Who Revolutionized Menstrual Pads

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner was a self-taught inventor who created the sanitary belt and filed five patents in her lifetime.

100+ LGBTQ Black Women You Should Know: The Epic Black History Month Megapost

“Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender women represent a vibrant and visible portion of the LGBTQ community. In addition to the legends of the Harlem Renaissance and the decades of groundbreaking activism spearheaded by women like Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith and Angela Davis, many of the most prominent coming out stories of the past two years have been black women like Brittney Griner, Raven-Symonè, Diana King and Robin Roberts. Meanwhile, Laverne Cox and Janet Mock have become the most visible transgender women in media.

So, in honor of Black History Month, below you’ll find over 100 lesbian, bisexual, gay, queer and transgender women you should know about. If she was still alive, the oldest person in this list would be 189 years old. The youngest person on this list is a mere 21 years of age. Like all our lists of this sort, this post aims to contain a wide variety of humans of all ages and backgrounds, from reality TV show stars (despite its numerous failings, Reality TV has been a major mainstream source of LGBTQ visibility dating back to the early ’90s) to State Representatives to actresses to game-changing activists.

what do you do when you want to tell your friend from across the world about one of the most important foods of your country but want to avoid spamming their phone with a million pictures? you make a powerpoint and put it on tumblr. duh.

for @newyearknwwme​