Believing in the inherent value of your body—and yourself—is a tricky act in modern America, where we are expected to work a paid job in order to “earn a living.”

The division between home and work remains paramount to the system we live under.

We face a whole array of challenges in this area, from basic considerations, like earning enough money, to worrying about how we’ll be perceived by people around us for taking a different approach to work and life, to even feeling a sense of guilt for “giving up” what so many hardworking women struggled to have the opportunity to achieve.

In the university program where I was supposed to be emancipating myself from the kitchen, preparing myself to go back to New York having at least answered the question of my own potential, the novelty and thrill had thoroughly worn off. I could not find the fun or the urgency in the eventless and physically idle academic life. It was so lethargic