Tamara Out Loud

This was going to be a story of feminism and self-ownership: The search for my nose began as a child. Mine was round and very unlike my mother's regal Roman nose. My birth father was long gone, but old photographs bore evidence of a nose bent and flattened from repeated breaking, a hazard of soccer and Spanish blood run hot. My nose did not have the narrow British look of my grandmother's nor the prominent Italian bulge of my grandfather's. It had no match, no ancestry, no belonging.  Read more >

I set out to write a blog that was truly candid, but that meant taking risks with where my audience might draw lines, and as I said above, I only started giving a slightly smaller shit what people though t-- I didn't quit caring altogether. So one of the most freeing things I've learned is that, although I keep them in mind, my audience doesn't shape my writing -- I do.  Read more >

I decided to take a Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) class with my friend Jen because it sounded like a good idea and it was free. (You can get me to do almost anything if you entice me with "free." I was raised by the cheapest people on earth.) In the first segment of the class we had some discussion, and I mentioned that I was a "survivor."  Read more >