A Cup of Chai Chia

2015-04-16-1429173730-2307779-Screenshot20150316at16.29.44.png

That moment when you remember you need to call someone and you’re in a gym class and you make a mental note to not forget. By the end of the class it’s totally fled your mind and you recall there was something but haven’t the foggiest what. So it happened to me today. Again. I want to start taking a very small as-inconspicuous-as-can-be notepad or just a small piece of paper and pen to make a note of anything that comes to mind, but who does that? And yet, shouldn’t everyone do it?

The most irritating thing is consciously making an effort to remember that one thing (or a growing to-do list) during the rest of the class, especially if there’s a whole 45 minutes left. Surely it’s better to make a note and then focus on the present moment — the class — rather than expending all brain activity to memorizing a potentially growing list. But if I did take a small notepad, the teacher might say something or my mat neighbors might eye me up bizarrely or perhaps I would make a very quick note while everyone had their eyes closed.

Luckily, this time, I did remember the two things I was meant to remember and after a busy Friday morning and afternoon, mostly stuck in traffic, I finally reached home and started making my next batch of Spice Bites. I was tired and wanted something hot and comforting to drink — not coffee and not too sweet. I used a small amount of the chia pudding I had made yesterday to make this chai chia drink. And it was just the thing I needed: creamy, nutty, slightly sweet and layers of textures with that fundamental taste of chai.

This is really quick and simple to make — it looks like a long list only because I’ve broken it down. Soak the cashews as long as you can, even overnight. The longer you soak the creamier it’ll taste.

Makes 4 cups

Cashew mix
50g cashews
250ml water
20g dates

Chia
15g chia
100ml water

Tea
1 teabag in 350ml hot water
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 tablespoons agave syrup

Soak the cashews in 250ml water for an hour or longer. While these are soaking, soak the chia seeds in 100ml hot water. Use a fork to mix the chia seeds to avoid large clumps from forming. Now blend the pitted dates, cashews and water in a high-speed blender, pour into a small pan, add the chia seeds and stir on low heat. In a separate pan, boil the tea, hot water, grated ginger and agave syrup. Once the tea is ready, use a strainer and pour into the cashew, date and chia mix. Stir everything together and pour into cups. Sprinkle a little cinnamon and some chopped pistachios to serve.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Finding Spirituality in the Diaspora

2015-04-28-1430261114-3425546-TanyaHartman_Daum057.JPG

Tanya Hartman is a storyteller. Her work, in all its varying disciplines (painting, crafting, mixed media) covers a large swath of ground, ensuring all the details of her tales are taken into account. So That I May Carry You With Me is an exquisitely detailed pastiche at the Daum Museum in Sedalia, Missouri. She unflinchingly discusses the diaspora that has our country teetering between xenophobia and open borders. A bit uneven in places, Hartman’s work underscores the spiritual and human accountability we all face as one person, one planet.

Encompassing pieces she has produced and shown in past exhibitions along with new work, the show feels like a retrospective. However, I think what Hartman accomplishes is a tale in full. Everything she created has been leading to this point. She takes visitors in concentric circles before leading us into a center of portraiture of refugees from political and societal breakdowns around the globe that is the nucleus of everything before it.

A hallmark of a strong artist is the ability to leave a footprint of recognizable styles. Secrets and Outtakes: Was It Met (2014) is one such idea. Tribal influences crafted into shapes like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. The abstract tone of the work and colors draws you closer.

What Was Beautiful (2007-14) behaves like stream of consciousness thoughts, like a diary that no one should read; its musings are private and cathartic. These snippets of conversation also leave blank spots in places where the text is lightly covered over, a translucent thought that has faded with time, which are the most intriguing components. What is not being said is where Hartman understands how a good story is told. Pauses for reflection or the insertion of ones own ideas that allow for individual reflection. As with Rhyming The Lines (2010), the amoeba-like shapes also show a blurring of text that implies a multiplication of new thoughts. I theorize that Hartman intentionally wants us to not hold one specific or definite idea, as everyone’s story is inherently different. The idea of incorporating snaps, buttons and other ephemera into the work also implies a transiency that supports this idea.

Prominently displayed, Alphabets and Earth: The Clay Letters (2015), extends all walls of the gallery. It brings a message of peace with an adage to treat your neighbor with decency and respect. Individual earthen letters hung speaks to the many who cross our borders for myriad reasons and all of them are interchangeable to say something different. Sometimes one sees art with expressions and thoughts incorporated can over-elucidate and squelch its intentions, but this massive work, along with What Was Beautiful is the concept of Journo-Expressionism done properly.

Where Hartman’s work falters is Icons from a Broken World (2014), found at the heart of this exhibition, an internal gallery displaying eight portraits of refugees. Portraiture is not Hartman’s strong suit, the paintings themselves are not completed with the same confidence or dexterity of everything previous. All done in straight-on head and shoulder poses, the subtlety of the exhibition up to this points suddenly stops. Hartman’s real talents are presentation and iconography. These are earnest paintings but lack the definitive power of the words and their mosaic qualities on other works. The addition of glass beads to the portraits, painstakingly applied, highlight the subjects flatness. She covers the gamut of refugee imagery but in their sittings all appear the same; distraught, vacant, drawn. While this is a necessary truth, their glass-beaded backgrounds only highlight the portraits flatness. I’m disappointed as Hartman’s craftsmanship is otherwise exceptional.

Hartman understands pastiche and mosaic and these paintings could be redone more abstractedly. I would direct her eye to Mickalene Thomas or Chuck Close for portraiture that elicits incredible power without succumbing to any ordinariness. By putting these works in its own gallery within a gallery is smart curating and all the more reason to render such ideas with a concept that reveals the pain of her subjects experiences in a more difficult, abstract manner.

Returning to ideas that Hartman knows best, Alphabets and Earth is a series of cryptic iconography from Serbia, South Sudan, Rwanda, Poland, Germany and Hungary. Created in a style that reveals the concept of strangers in a strange land uncovers small, intimate propositions. Painstakingly created on a small scale, anything larger would lose their immediacy for these are elegant prose that is nothing short of hypnotic.

People want something glistening and hopeful to hold onto. Hartman does both; she presents a spiritual reconciliation while asking us to stare into the abyss. She is aware of humankind’s’ temporal, temporary state. We are a species always in transit, always in flux. But Hartman manages to boil down the hardened outer shell to reveal the sweet fruit of spirituality that encompasses all the thoughts and feelings that might otherwise become impossible to digest.

2015-04-28-1430263725-5400824-TanyaHartman_Daum022.JPG

2015-04-28-1430260595-6641903-TanyaHartman_Daum052.JPG

2015-04-28-1430260417-9970953-TanyaHartman_Daum001.JPG

2015-04-28-1430260711-5997407-TanyaHartman_Daum002.JPG

2015-04-28-1430262560-6507148-TanyaHartman_Daum006a.JPG

Images courtesy Aaron Paden
Tanya Hartman: So That I May Carry You With Me
Daum Museum, Sedalia, Missouri
January 31 – May 31, 2015

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Vibrating Mailbox Shuts Down Penn. Town Square

BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) — Police were picking up some bad vibrations from a buzzing mailbox in a Pennsylvania town, enough to prompt them to shut down the town square for a couple of hours.

Bellefonte police Chief Shawn Weaver says the “vibrating noise, like an alarm going off” was reported at about 10 a.m. Tuesday. Because police couldn’t be sure what was causing it, Penn State bomb experts and state police were called in, and a section of downtown was cordoned off until about 12:30 p.m.

It turns out someone had dropped a medical alert pager into the mailbox.

Police don’t yet know whether the device was dropped accidentally or put there by a prankster.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Nature Is a Gift

Treasured, Loving Gifts

I opened the doors leading out to my quaint, private patio and gazed at my gorgeous dwarf olive tree, the purple bougainvillea climbing up the patio walls and spilling overhead on a trellis, the blue sky above, the deep green boxwood hedges surrounding the small lanai with bouquets of multi-colored impatient plants popping up their heads. I said, “good morning, world!” I sighed in delight, patted Orchid and smiled.

I purposely walked outside to write my good morning story. I wanted to be with nature. Other than my family, there is nothing I love more. Nature is Mother Earth… the Universe.

I sat down at my charming petite, iron table, with Orchid by my side, and opened my laptop. I looked around at my surroundings. I had created a perfect feng shui environment. I was in the moment with my pooch, my laptop and my second love — nature.

My stories today are short vignettes that hold a special place in my heart. These stories are about gifts from the sea and gifts from the earth. Gifts I have given and gifts I have gotten. One story took place in America on Nantucket Island; another in Ireland and the third vignette took place in Israel. I call these stories, “Gifts of the Heart.”

A Gift From the Sea

Several years ago my husband, Shelly, and I were walking hand-in-hand in the early hours of the morning along the Atlantic shore. The sun had just peaked her head. We were on Nantucket Island. We were the lone walkers on the beach. As my eyes skirted the vicinity, I noticed in the distance, among very tall reeds, a tall woman with white hair. I noticed she would disappear and then reappear!

“I would love to meet that woman,” I said to Shelly.

“What woman?” He asked.

“The woman in the not-too-far distance,” I replied.

“Why is that important to you?”

“I’m inquisitive,” I explained. I want to know what is she doing out here alone in the tall reeds. She keeps bending over and then standing up.”

“Alright, let’s go,” said Shelly.

We had to push the reeds back as we made our way to her side.

She was almost six feet tall, with silver hair worn in a bun. She had a bronze glow to her skin, beautiful, clear blue eyes and strong, large hands. She was dressed in a long blue dress that resembled a pinafore with an apron tied around her waist and under her pinafore she wore a crisp white shirt. I imagined her to be in her eighties.

She smiled. We smiled.

“Good morning,” we said. “We walked over to see what you are doing.”

“I am shelling… collecting shells,” she replied.

“I love sea shells,” I declared. “I love everything that has to do with the sea.”

She then opened her apron and showed me her morning collection of the most amazing seashells I had ever seen.

“What do you do with all these shells?” I inquired.

“I collect shells for the shell shop in town. Today I found the most beautiful shell. Look!”

“Do you know its name? I asked.

“Yes, it is called a Moon Shell.”

She noticed I could not take my eyes off this exquisitely-patterned shell and said, smiling, “I would like to give it to you! Please accept this as my gift from the sea.”

She continued, “Take it home, wash it in bleach to clean out the animal and the bleach will bring back its natural color.”

I looked up at her and replied, “Thank you. I will always treasure your gift.”

We said our goodbyes. I carefully wrapped my moon shell and carried her back to Chicago. I followed the instructions from the ‘woman in blue,’ and then placed my beautiful white shell into a glass box with lid so I could view her every day. Moon Shell sits on my desk today… 15 years later! The joy this small gift brings cannot be measured in words. I wish I could once again thank ‘the woman in blue.’

2015-04-28-1430249426-8169856-heartshapedpebbleamongotherrocksjpg.jpg

Two Daughters, Two Hearts, Two Valentine’s Day Presents

This story took place about ten years ago as Shelly and I drove around the Ring of Kerry in Ireland.

One of our stops was at a famous lake that grants wishes if you dip your hands in the water. I could not resist!

“Let’s walk down to the lake,” I said to Shelly.

The walk down was laden with medium-sized rocks in all shapes and sizes. It was a difficult walk. You could trip or lose your balance because the rocks moved as you walked. You had to keep your eyes glued to the ground as you proceeded down to the water’s edge.

As I neared the water, I saw two medium-sized rocks lying side by side. I truly believe that a million people would never have noticed these rocks. To my eye they looked liked abstract hearts.

I let go of Shelly’s hand and bent down to pick them up.

“What are you doing?” Shelly asked.

“What do these rocks remind you of?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” was the answer I expected.

“They are abstract hearts! I am going to take them home, write a saying on each rock in red magic marker and give them to Jenny and Lizzie for Valentine’s presents!”

Shelly just smiled. Squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek.

When I give gifts, thought wins over cost.

But I must admit that I did not think these two rocks would have such an impact on my daughters. I was overjoyed when I saw the heart’s importance. Overjoyed because my daughters visualized their mother finding them on the shoreline of Ireland… and thinking of them.

My daughters have perfume trays in their baths. One daughter lives in Chicago. The other daughter lives in Arizona. I noticed years ago that both of my daughters placed their Valentine rock with their Mother’s words of love on their perfume trays. They still sit there today.

A Grandson’s Gift to His Honey

My grandson, Robbie, was traveling to Israel on Birth Right, a great trip for young people. He always brings me a present from his travels.

“Honey, what would you like me to bring you from Israel?” Robbie asked.

“Nothing from the store. A gift from the land would be a treasure,” I replied.

I was not disappointed in this grandson of mine. He brought me a perfectly-shaped round rock. It looks like sand and it is sturdy and hard like the State of Israel.

It is a treasured gift because it came from my grandson and the land of Israel. My rock sits on my desk along with my Moon Stone.

I have taught this to my children and grandchildren by my words and my gifts. Little treasures from Honey… straight from the heart.

These are my words to them:

“Gifts do not have to cost money to bring joy to your family and friends. The joy of a material possession lasts but for the moment. A gift from the heart lasts… a lifetime.”

Have a wonderful day my “honey bee” readers. Until next time…

Warmly,
Honey Good

Image Sources: 1, 2

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

House Republicans Want To Block Predatory Lending Protections For American Troops

WASHINGTON — House Republicans are pushing legislation to block predatory lending protections for American soldiers, under pressure from the banking lobby.

GOP lawmakers tucked the deregulation item into the National Defense Authorization Act — a major bill setting the military’s funding, along with a number of other controversial terms on Guantanamo Bay and other issues. If the banking item is enacted, it would impose a one-year delay on new Department of Defense rules meant to shield military families from abusive terms on payday loans and other forms of high-interest credit. The bill is being considered Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee.

The military has been struggling with the financial impact of predatory lending on service members for years. A 2014 report issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau documents a host of abuses targeting troops. One family that took out a $2,600 loan ended up paying back $3,966.84 over the course of a year. Another borrower spent $1,428.28 to pay off a $485 loan in just six months. Thousands of service members receive short-term, high-interest loans each year.

In 2006, Congress passed legislation imposing a 36 percent cap on interest rates for payday loans, auto title loans and tax refund anticipation loans to military families. Lenders responded by slightly tweaking the terms of their loans to avoid the limits. Since the law applied to payday loans with terms of 91 days or less, and amounts of $2,000 or less, credit companies were able to shirk the rules with 92-day loans, or loans of $2,001.

Big banks were even more creative, issuing “deposit advance products” — functionally almost identical to payday loans, but with a different name and with effective annual interest rates of around 300 percent. Congress responded to these tricks in 2012 by passing another law directing the Pentagon to fix these loopholes, and new rules were finalized in September of last year.

The rules are strongly supported by consumer groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Wednesday’s GOP bill would delay those rules for a year, ostensibly to allow for a new study to examine the effects of the rules. The CFPB has already performed two such studies.

“It is unconscionable,” Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said in a written statement. “It is a sign of just how indebted certain members of Congress are to corporate interests that a critical, commonsense regulation that is needed to protect our national security can be sacrificed in service to the predatory lending industry.”

The American Bankers Association — the primary lobbying group for the banking industry — has lobbied against the Pentagon rules, specifically seeking to shield deposit advance products from their scope.

“In 2006 Congress acted in a bipartisan manner by passing the Military Lending Act, but nearly a decade later lenders continue to evade the Act’s original intent,” Holly Petraeus, CFPB’s assistant director of servicemember affairs, told HuffPost in an email. “I continue to hear from military families about the array of payday-like products that are specifically marketed to them, often featuring flag-waving patriotic language along with a sky-high interest rate… Every day these loopholes remain open is another day unscrupulous lenders are free to prey on members of our military.”

Big banks have had an ugly relationship with American soldiers lately. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup pursued hundreds of illegal foreclosures against active-duty members of the military, ultimately reaching multiple settlements with the Department of Justice over such practices. As a result, they have embarked on extensive public relations campaigns to repair their image.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The Seven Stages of Failure

2015-04-29-1430324271-8103773-otherfailure.jpg

Thomas Edison once said, “I don’t fail. I have just figured out 1000 ways it didn’t work.”

There’s so much truth to that statement, but most of us become blindsided by that word we fear most: Failure.

The ‘F’ word. Really it’s just a bunch of ‘s’ words. Scary. Shameful. Sh**ty.

When failure happens, it can get under our skin like an old boyfriend or girlfriend. And we can’t seem to shake them off. Too often we let it become a constant reminder that we aren’t good enough or perhaps we never were?

Yet if we open up the failure and examine it, there is a profound lesson to learn. And it’s often not the one we thought. I’ve found this comes as a huge gift. We have learned to look for it.

A couple of professors at the University of California Berkeley (and yes, one of them moonlights at Princeton), John Danner and Mark Coopersmith, interviewed an impressive group of highly successful people about failure and incorporated their insights into a new book, “The Other ‘F’ Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work.” They spoke with executives we have all heard of, entrepreneurs who invented products we covet and other cool folks.

Each person reflected on a time they failed, how they dealt with it and most importantly, what in the world they learned from it. And interestingly enough, a lot of important and soulful stuff emerges. They remind us that failure is a necessary part of discovery and can lead to success, not its opposite. But it is how we understand and respond to failure that dictates whether it becomes a career stopper or a pathway to huge opportunity.

Mostly as parents we focus on improving our kids’ self-esteem by asking “what did you excel at today?” But this was not the case for Spanx billionaire, Sara Blakely. She was raised assessing her failure early on because her father made it a point to ask: “What did you fail at today?” Sara’s father makes us think about whether we should hone our kids’ and employees’ grit and determination by focusing on the lessons learned from the small daily failures.

There is much I liked about this book, but for me the biggest takeaway was how well it deconstructed failure in a systematic way. It reminds us to ‘respect the gravity of failure’ so we take it seriously. Danner and Coopersmith identify the seven stages of failure and provide excellent advice.

Respect – the gravity of failure in an inevitably fallible organization
Rehearse – protocols you will use for handling a range of failures
Recognize – signals of failure to buy time to minimize long term impacts
React – effectively to failure
Reflect – thoughtfully, quickly, thoroughly to reasons for the failure
Rebound – to after effects and incorporate the lessons learned
Remember – to embed your experience and make sure it is in the cultural memory of the organization

2015-04-29-1430323901-2525657-failurevaluecycle01.22.15.jpg

This book is a great practical guide for personal and professional innovation and growth. It can help us all gain more skills and the confidence to just go for it.

As they say, why waste a good failure.

Dust ourselves off and learn to failure forward. That is what Danner and Coopersmith help us do in their new book

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

French Troops Accused Of Child Abuse In Central African Republic

PARIS, April 29 (Reuters) – A French prosecutor is carrying out a preliminary investigation into allegations of child abuse by French soldiers stationed in Central African Republic, a Justice Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.

Responding to a report in British daily the Guardian that a senior U.N. aid worker had been suspended after disclosing to prosecutors an internal report on the sexual abuse of children by French troops, the spokesman said:

“A preliminary investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutor since July 31, 2014. The investigation is ongoing,” he said declining to give further details.

A French judicial source said the prosecutor’s office had received the U.N. report in July 2014 and was investigating if there had been abuse on minors.

There was no immediate comment from the United Nations. (Reporting By Chine Labbe; writing by John Irish; editing by Mark John)

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

U.S. Airstrikes In Afghanistan Continue Despite Formal End To War

Months after President Obama formally declared that the United States’ long war against the Taliban was over in Afghanistan, the American military is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harm’s way under the guise of “training and advising.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

NBA Player Will Barton Promotes Positive Solutions In Baltimore

Amid the protests and demonstrations following the death of Freddie Gray, Will Barton of the Denver Nuggets organized a block party at a basketball court in Baltimore, Maryland, on Tuesday.

Barton, a 24-year-old Baltimore native, organized the event with the purpose of planning “a positive strategy on how to protect and proactively save our children and our communities,” he wrote on Instagram.

“Leadership matters and I can’t think of a better time to call on our local celebrities whether it be an athlete, musician, actor or your personal hero,” he wrote. “The love we have for our kids have to be shown now or their future will be determined in part by our actions or lack [thereof].”

With s open mind and humble heart, I am respectfully requesting that all of my able friends, neighborhood leaders, and people of influence meet myself and other positive individuals today at 12pm at CloverDale Basketball Court. The purpose of this gathering is to plan and execute a positive strategy on how to protect and proactively save our children and our communities. I can not do this by myself, so please join us. Leadership matters and I can’t think of a better time to call on our local celebrities whether it be an athlete, musician, actor or your personal hero. The love we have for our kids have to be shown now or their future will be determined in part by our actions or lack of…#BlackLivesMatter #BePositive #BePeaceful #DontTareDown #BeHopeful @thestokeyproject

A photo posted by Will Barton (@willthethrillb5) on Apr 28, 2015 at 9:24am PDT

Barton became a nationally renowned basketball player at nearby Lake Clifton High School, and he told the Baltimore Sun that he hopes to use his influence to convince children to fight for change using a positive message.

“We just want to keep things like this going and just tell the kids that there’s a different way we can do things,” Barton said. “We can do it the bad way … or we can do it in a positive way and get results. That’s what I’m striving for. That’s what we’re striving for.”

The city of Baltimore has been consumed in recent days by protests, some violent and some non-violent, a result of the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old who died in police custody earlier this month. It’s been a difficult time for the city, and the event appeared to be a welcome moment of peace:

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Defining the Blurred Lines

2015-04-28-1430242620-2166644-YaelMalka_01.jpg Yael Malka

This past July, I went on a date with a guy I had met the week before at a concert. He invited me to hang out on his roof and listen to music. This seemed a relaxed and fun summer date — and I accepted. I greeted him in front of his building in the late afternoon and he took me to his apartment, saying he wanted to give me a tour before we headed up to the roof. Immediately upon entering, he took me into his bedroom and started removing my clothes.

It was not as if I weren’t attracted to him, or didn’t have any interest in having sex with him at some point — but not then. But it was happening so quickly it was hard to stop, and I went along with it, convincing myself that I wanted it too. He had this look in his eyes of distinct determination — like he was intent on getting precisely what he wanted — and I felt frightened by it. I kept going back and forth between convincing myself I was into it and playing along, and frantically thinking of ways to bail myself out. But I didn’t stop him, and it happened. Needless to say, I never saw the roof.

For several days following, I kept quiet. I felt humiliated and utterly confused by the event and didn’t understand how this had happened to me. As a self-proclaimed feminist, having majored in Women’s and Gender Studies, I was sure I had the necessary tools to prevent this sort of thing.

But after days of mulling it over, embarrassment and shame turned into rage. And suddenly, for whatever reason, I felt like talking.

Telling my friends about my experience was hard, but not in the way I thought it would be. Yes, reliving that experience was difficult and unpleasant, but the true challenge was being able to describe exactly what had happened. Had I been raped? I wasn’t sure. Had I given consent? Maybe? I wanted to talk about what I had experienced, but I couldn’t find the words to appropriately describe the situation. “You know,” I’d say to friends, “it was kind of in that grey area between rape and consent. Blurry lines.” Any terminology I could come up with was so extremely vague it was impossible to articulate anything.

So, I set out to learn more about this thing — this form of sex that is unwanted and un-enjoyed — the “blurry lines” between rape and consent. During the fall of 2014, I researched the concept of “unwanted sex” and spoke with dozens of friends and acquaintances, both men and women, to find out if they had ever experienced this kind of sexual situation. What I found absolutely floored me. Not just some of the women I’d spoken to, or most of the women I’d spoken to, but ALL of the women I’d spoken to had experienced this unwanted and un-enjoyed sex that fell somewhere between rape and consent. Furthermore, almost all women spoke about these experiences as if they were normal parts of having an active sex life — as if sometimes you just have to put up with being pushed into a sex act you don’t want to take part in.

During these conversations, I heard a wide-range of attempts to define these experiences. One woman referred to her experience with unwanted sex as “disheartened sex.” Other women simply referred to it as “a weird night,” or “bad sex.”

But what actually happens here? What does it mean to have an experience in which one engages in unwanted sex, but does not feel explicitly forced into the sex act? And why had 100 percent of women I spoke with experienced this?

One reason many engage in this kind of sex act, I discovered, is because they fear refusing their partner could potentially result in an unpleasant encounter with them. Many of those I spoke with reported, “giving in” — and some actually used the term “consenting” — in order to avoid a situation that might become awkward, uncomfortable, or even violent. They feared that escaping the situation with the necessary force and aggression would result in an extreme reaction from their partners. One woman put it this way: “I thought that if I refused him again, he might actually rape me.” Another described a situation in which she ultimately “consented” because she feared a “non-consensual experience.” She reported not stopping “because I didn’t want this person to get angry and hurt me.”

A few others described situations in which they gave consent to a particular sex act, but felt their partner took advantage of that consent by assuming a “now anything goes” mindset. One woman described an experience in which she “fully consented” to intercourse with a man pending the use of a condom. But mid-way through sex, she noticed the condom was lying on the floor. The man had removed the condom, without her knowing, and proceeded to have unprotected sex with her. When she realized what was happening, she became furious and immediately told him to leave. “I know I wasn’t raped, because I consented, but he changed the terms under which I consented, so what is that? I don’t know what to call it, but it was definitely a violation of some sort.”

Many also reported feeling unable to stop a situation from happening once they were already engaged in foreplay. Another woman said: “he just sort of went for it and everything just sort of happened so fast that there wasn’t time for me to cut it off. Then this mindset kicks in of like ‘well, I’m already here, let’s just let this happen.'” This notion of “just letting it happen” was referenced with extreme frequency in interviews and seems to imply that in these encounters, “consent” is neither given nor not given, but rather left out of the discussion altogether. The fact that these women never consented, but didn’t not consent is confusing for them, and makes claiming the terms assault, rape or victim, seem less legitimate.

Perhaps because there truly is a “middle-ground” when talking about assault, or perhaps because legal definitions of rape are varying, and often muddled, victims of these other unwanted sex acts do not seem to be claiming any term. Whatever the reason, rape does not appear to accurately describe this type of other, unwanted sexual experience, or speak to those who are victims of it. These types of unwanted sexual experiences sometimes involve verbal consent, and sometimes do not; they usually include verbal coercion, but do not have to; they can start wanted, but become unwanted. Indeed, these kinds of sexual scenarios are different, rampant, and seemingly, nameless.

Language is powerful, and sociologists and psychologists have long studied how language affects experiences. Summarizing recent work in her 2008 dissertation “Unwanted Sex Versus Rape,” Charity Wilkinson illustrates how the lack of or availability of language can change the way we perceive human behavior. Language is a tool used to maintain power, she argues; those in positions of power create the language which can therefore be used to “devalue women or ignore their experience.”

Based on both my personal interviews and existing statistics on victims of sexual assault, I speculate that these forms of unwanted sex are experienced primarily, (though not exclusively) by women. Because of the generalized power of men in our social world (or more relevantly, the lack of power of women) it is no wonder that these other unwanted sex acts have gone unnamed. Perhaps we lack the language to be able to describe these kinds of sexual encounters because it is a largely female experience in a male-dominated world.

Recently, this kind of sexual situation has received some attention in popular culture. In her 2014 book Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham, writer and creator of HBO’s Girls, recounts an unpleasant sexual experience while in college: She and “Bearry” head back to his apartment after a party and have intercourse, which she describes as being “terribly aggressive.” Mid-way through the encounter, Dunham realizes the condom is not being used, but rather dangling from her roommate’s potted plant. She then abruptly stops, and throws Barry and his clothes out of her dorm room.

She recaps the experience months later to a boyfriend, but has trouble articulating what exactly happened to her, “I am just angry that I don’t have better words,” she tells him. Years later, while telling the Barry story to her co-writers on Girls, she describes the experience as “a sexual encounter that no one can classify properly. A condom winding up in the potted plant against the will of the girl being fucked.” In response, her co-writers shake their heads and agree that rape isn’t funny. “But that’s the thing,” I say. ‘No one knows if it’s rape. It’s, like, a confusing situation that…’ I trailed off.”

This tendency to “trail off” when talking about unwanted and un-enjoyed sexual experiences perfectly illustrates the problem. It is, of course, difficult to talk about one’s own traumatic experiences and to identify as a victim. In fact, according to RAINN (Rape Abuse & Incest National Network) many victims of rape (68 percent) never report their assault to the police, and many more do not come forth and identify themselves as victims to anyone. Perhaps Dunham did not fully articulate her experience because she wished to steer clear of labeling herself as a victim of assault. But I also think it’s possible that her “trail-off,” is a result of her inability to find language to accurately describe her experience.

My sample size was, admittedly, small and homogeneous, as I interviewed heterosexual white women more than any other demographic. But if this small sample even approaches reflecting the experiences of sexually active youth in modern-day America, then this thing, this form of un-enjoyed and unwanted sex, is not just a problem, but an epidemic.

Language is power, indeed. After speaking with dozens of articulate women and hearing them try to string together vague terminology to try and describe their experiences, it seems obvious to me that we lack the language necessary to be able to speak clearly about some experiences involving non-consensual sex. Perhaps using terms like unwilling consent or coercive consent would be a start. But these conversations have shown me that people have had a wide variety of experiences involving unwanted and un-enjoyed sex, and thus there must be a wide variety of terms available for them to claim.

In a perfect world, we would not need any more language to talk about assault. More concerning than the fact that we have a serious lack of language to describe unwanted sexual situations is the fact that sexual assault, rape and unwanted sex are so rampant in the first place. However, through creating more language to be able to talk about unwanted sexual experiences, we can bring them into focus and into the discourse of American sex culture. We need language so we can stop describing experiences as having “blurry lines,” or being in “the grey area,” and “trailing off” when we try to talk about them.

So let’s talk about the grey area and blurry lines. Let’s define them, and let’s develop language that is true to those experiences.

Need help? In the U.S., visit the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline operated by RAINN. For more resources, visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.