In truth, I’m quite proud of my class of 1963. Three that I know of got caught in the second wave of feminism and became chairs of women’s studies departments. Five of us, at least, have published books. Many taught at the college level. I’m looking forward to hearing the accomplishments of others when my BFF reports in. She urged me to go with her, but she’s a few hours up I-95 from the school and I’m across the continent we studied in school. Also, I felt like the odd girl out back then and I feel just the same now. As she e-mailed, “Wish you were here but you would probably explode.”

Oh, and did I mention a federal judge? Who would have thought one of us, especially a woman, would accomplish as much as she has. If she’d been born ten years earlier she might have gotten as far as president of a PTA.

High school was so long ago, yet so fresh in my mind. I went into it determined to leave my bashfulness behind. I managed to make friends, and also to grow a persona that would mature with me. My poetry was published in our literary magazine; I was gay and proud of it; my ambition, beyond writing, was to be a gym teacher. One foot was in the circle of high school intelligentsia, the other in a sneaker on the tennis and volleyball courts.

An altruistic alumna, who became a librarian, created an internet page for those early sixties classes. By way of introduction, she wrote, “We came of age in the mid-sixties. It is hard to believe the changes we went through and our world went through in the years between 1963 and 1967. Did we make the times or did the times make us?” What a great question for us, for any generation.

Did we help change the world for the better? Well, we sure tried. How many of us died in Vietnam? How many were arrested for protesting that war? How many were active in the civil rights movement? The women’s movement? Gay liberation? Were environmentalists? Pro- or anti-choice activists?  Did any grow their hair, drop acid and become hippies? My BFF was at Altamont when the Rolling Stones were there. Were others at Kent State? I know some were hit with cancer. At least two committed suicide.

Why do I have no desire to be at the reunion? Would it really be too disturbing to see the metamorphoses of these people from dreaming kids to world-weary adults? Only one was a lover and I ran into her out here about 20 years ago. She wanted to stay in touch, but too much water over the bridge for me. I have a very full life, for which I’m grateful, and my seventeenth summer, lovely as it, and she, was, has been over for a long, long time.

Long enough that I’m looking at retirement from my job too. When I checked out the high school page it was clear I’m one of the last to stop working for a living. I feel like a sixties dropout compared to them. I’ve had jobs ever since graduation, but just to scrape by while I gave most of my energy to writing. Looking at the bios on our class pages I see teachers, ad execs, attorneys, designers and engineers, along with those who identify themselves as housewives and mothers. As far as I can see, I’m the only one who boasts of writing queer books or even of being queer.

No, I have no desire to see those folks. We sat in classrooms and passed one another in hallways. We survived high school, adult careers, marriages, marches, the tech revolution, empty nests, losses and successes. Some of us proved to be a waste of space, others made a bit of history or culture or money or offspring. I may be odd girl out again, but I have no time to review milestones. In my head, I’m still 17, anxious to get on with writing future stories, to, finally, making a lasting marriage, to changing the world.

Lee’s new book The Raid is now available in both paper and electronic format from Bold Strokes Books

The Raid by Lee Lynch
Before Stonewall, having a drink with friends or your girl could mean jail. In 1961, The Old Town Tavern is more than just a gay bar. It’s a home to strangers who have become family.  They drink, they dance, they fall in lust and in love. They don’t even know who the enemy is, only that it is powerful enough to order the all-too-willing vice squad to destroy the bar and their lives. Would these women and men still have family, a job, a place to live after…The Raid? This was how it was done then, this was the gay life, and this is the resilient gay will.

Lee Lynch’s novel Rafferty Street concludes her epic Morton River Valley Trilogy (Dusty’s Queen of Hearts Diner and Morton River Valley). In this stand-alone novel Annie Heaphy, beloved hero of Lynch’s classic Toothpick House, reunites with her old crowd. She loves her job driving people with disabilities to and from work – until being gay becomes an issue. Valley gays unite to defend her as she revels in love with the right, and wrong, women. Lynch’s warm, engaging prose deeply affects her readers as she tells her story – even more powerful today when civil rights for gays are still denied. Now available in electronic format from Bold Strokes Books.

When we first met, the first thing I noticed (besides her giant triangular mullet hairdo) was her tremendous self-confidence. She advised me in matters large and small, and although she was just a couple of years older, I thought she was more mature than me. And she was. Mature, beautiful, eccentric and incredibly smart.

Over the years she encouraged me into therapy and recovery, forced me to learn computer skills, demonstrated how to buy real estate, and believed in me as an artist, even when I didn’t believe in myself. I went kicking and screaming through each new transition, always reluctant to move into new phases of life. Lynnly was always available to lend an ear and offer encouragement, night or day, even if my phone call woke her up in the middle of the night.

She fearlessly filed the first sexual harassment suit and won for hostile environment at the ad agency we worked at together. She never worked in advertising again, but wasted no time reinventing herself in business, again and again.

She stuck with me through giving birth and major career moves, always documenting my life with her incredible skill in photography. She was my scolding boss, the freelance photographer I hired who was late for our appointments, and an absolute genius at all things Mac computer related.

Lynnly was a lover of animals (over people!) and an incredibly generous spirit. She was the biggest supporter of my long-term relationship and being a mom, even though she never enjoyed either for herself.

Happy Birthday Lynn! Thank you for teaching me how to live and how to die without fear about what’s next. I just wish you were still here to share it with me.

Read Vicki Randle’s post on Lynnly here.

It’s true–I’m masculine and feminine. I poke and I like to get poked. When I was a young lass of five with my short pixie haircut, people always asked me, “Are you a boy or a girl?” The question bothered me because I thought it was obvious I was a girl with super short hair who liked being called a tomboy. I did have two dolls that I played with for about five minutes during my childhood but they didn’t turn me on like my machine gun.

I spent most of my time hanging out with my little brother Greg playing army, cowboys, acting like The Three Stooges, wrestling, looking for bugs in the yard, pretending to be the Beatles and James Brown. On a few occasions, I attempted to pee standing up but that didn’t work out so well.

I loved shaving with my dad using my fake razor that my mom bought me. Afterwards, I’d spend hours in front of the mirror messing with my hair slicking it back with Brylcreem, “a little dab’ll do ya”. God I loved how that hair goop smelled.

I’d be there looking at myself in the mirror wishing for side burns but then a few hours later I’d have no problem putting on my baby doll pajamas. One morning I woke up in a cowboy mood and I put on my leather vest, my gun holster, my two-tone boots and my hat still wearing my super femme PJs. I was gender fluid on the rocks.

Then puberty hit and my male/female flexibility came to a screeching halt. I thought my boy days were over. I was devastated. That whole week my shattered 12 year old psyche felt gender expectations of the early 70′s making me act more like Marcia Brady. I listened to Carol King’s Tapestry album over and over weeping, nodding my head in disbelief while clutching that sky blue box of Kotex sanitary pads. It’s too late, baby now it’s too late…It really was too late; my female parts were functioning in full glory.

But I soon realized despite the blood coming out of me on a monthly basis, I could still be my unique Yin Yang self. I became a big basketball jock at my all girl Catholic high school and the chicks liked my silly sexy vibe. Those coquettish girls would always tell me, “Monica, you act like a guy.” To which I would reply exuding my swagger in my jock apparel while running my fingers through my hair, “So.” They wanted to bounce my ball, hard.

As I was a basketball hero to these gals, I also was wearing make-up and dating dudes. I felt awkward dangling on some guy’s arm but my high school world pressured me to do so. I went to Prom with a guy I liked but I really freaked him out when I told him I wanted to wear a tuxedo. “Please don”t,” he begged me. “People will think we’re gay.” Foreshadowing.

During my second year of college, all the stars aligned with The Gap and I came out as a big ol’ lesbo. Finally. Nothing really changed except–I COULD BREATHE! I continued my femme-y butch jock look wearing my bra as a tool belt while shooting hoops. Yeah, I was a trendsetter.

Now in my 50′s, I still feel male/female energy. I wear clothes for men, women and scarecrows. I’ve made a commitment to be myself in all my complexities. When people ask me: “Are you butch or femme?” I tell them, “I’m a Gemini.”

Happy Pride Month, everybody. Love yourself.

Book Monica Palacios  for your upcoming university and cultural events focusing on: LGBT, Chicana/Latina, Theater, Women, Gender, Performance, Race, Class, Sexuality, Vegetarian Food.

Susan:  I just wish Karen would trust me more.  She just can’t let herself lean on me.  She’s been hurt before and has built up these walls…

Karen:  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  It’s just really hard to trust her.  I can’t just let go and lean like she wants me too.

They were caught up in exploring the roots of Karen’s difficulty trusting, but I was thinking about a saying, “Don’t push the river, it flows by itself.”  I was picturing Susan wading bravely into some mountain river, trying to push it along and getting frustrated because she’s just getting cold and wet and the river is just flowing along like it always does.  And Karen, feeling guilty and inadequate because she can’t speed herself up.  I wanted them to climb out of the water for a minute, take a few deep breaths, and remember the truth about rivers, and human nature.

You just can’t talk someone into trusting you. It’s a process, it develops by itself, and if you push it too much, you’re being…untrustworthy!

I say untrustworthy because when you’ve got an agenda to convince someone she should trust you, you’re not really respecting her pace, or listening to what she says.  She’s saying she needs time to get to know you, to see how you handle being told she doesn’t need to lean on you right this minute.  Are you going to get hurt, or offended?  Or are you going to step back, respect her autonomy, and pay attention to your own?

There are couple other trust questions that can yield a lot more valuable information.  One is –trust you to…what?  Listen to what I say, take me seriously, respect my boundaries, appreciate the way my water flows? And don’t judge or analyze me because I’m different from you, any more than you’d say the Yuba River is inherently superior to the Chattahoochee…they’re both beautiful and fun, in their own ways.

And the really important trust question is-do you trust yourself?  If you start wading into this river and find that there are some very cold currents, or stagnant pools, will you have the courage and the sense to wade back out again?  If you start investing in this relationship and realize that you’re really on different wavelengths in terms of how much affection you need, how much self-disclosure feels right to you, how much sex you want—I hope you can trust yourself to take your own needs seriously, to stop trying to make something fit that just isn’t a good fit.

I remember the first time a therapist said to me “You can trust your feelings.”  At the time, it felt like an amazing, life-changing awareness—so that’s why I have feelings!  They’re guideposts, just like the sensation of burning heat guides me to take my hand off the stove.  And my feelings, at the time, were telling me I was suffocating in a relationship.  I followed those feelings right out of that relationship, and have been eternally grateful.

But then it gets complicated again, like when I know what I feel but I don’t want to.  It’s like when you try on something to wear at the store.  It looks beautiful on the hanger, the color and style are perfect…but it just doesn’t fit right.  Then you start thinking –maybe if I hold my breath, or stand up really straight, or drop my shoulders a little, or whatever.  Sometimes you take it home and it hangs in your closet forever, or you wear it and realize it really doesn’t work.  Because, sadly or not, reality prevails.

Speaking of reality—trust issues are loaded when you’re in a new relationship.  You’ve got a huge flow of oxytocin –the “bonding chemical” –coursing through your system, making you feel warm  and wonderful—but you don’t really know each other yet!  So you’re bonding to your own fantasy of who you hope she is.  Then reality starts to sink in, and you lose a little of that lovin’ feeling before you can gain other feelings, like trust.  Real trust, that’s based on a series of small experiences where you’ve felt validated, respected, understood.  Then you can know if this is a river you can keep flowing with.

About Dr. Glenda Corwin:

Glenda Corwin, Ph.D is a clinical psychologist who specializes in lesbian sexual issues. She is the author of Sexual Intimacy for Women: A Guide for Same Sex Couples (Seal Press, 2010). Dr. Corwin writes for the Huffington Post: Gay Voices, for the e-magazine Epochalips, as well as her own blog on www.DrGlendaCorwin.com. She presents frequently at professional conferences, and is a regular guest on Barb Elgin’s LesbianLoveTalk radio program.

JG: I really like writing about anything before the 60s – partly because there aren’t that many people alive who will complain. But also because there’s still a level of hope that people of color have. It hasn’t all devolved into cynicism and ugly gold jewelry. The sixties were the pinnacle of that hope but after that, it seems there was so much bitterness and rather than striving to be bigger and better, it seemed like the male portion of the African American community was striving to be like the people who exploited us. The goals became: make money, treat women badly and avoid connecting with the progressive impulses that would move the world forward.

MA: That’s very poignant in a way. There’s a line in your play, “We’re black – everything we do is spiritual.” It seems to me that there is a kind of stereotypical black spirituality which somehow makes it ok for black people to continue tolerating a racist society – as if African Americans have a special line to God that helps them able to accept oppression on some special magic level. On the other hand, what you say in the play – in that single line – about African American spirituality as a unifying construct is quite different. What I’m hearing you say is that somewhere in the 60s, after the pinnacle of hope, there was a fading of that spiritual connectedness.  Would that be accurate?

JG: I would say that.

MA: There was an institutionalizing of the black church, hooking up with democratic politics but that’s not the same.

JG: That’s not spiritual. There was a loss of that righteous energy that used to connect black people to each other.

MA: Are there other female African American writers who understand that as well? Maybe Toni Morrison?

JG:  I think Toni Morrison definitely understands that.  That’s one of the reasons she can write so well about earlier African American history. I think she’s grounded in that core sense of spiritual connection that Black people had to have with each other in order to be bigger and better…

MA: …and hold on. It seems directly connected with community. I am reminded of the acceptance speech she gave on receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. I believe her subject concerned the matter of the White Gaze. Her point was that to live in a world defined and circumscribed by that gaze is to have one’s own spirituality drained. That’s certainly true for women as well, being at the affect of the Male Gaze in virtually all circumstances and therefore drained of one’s three-dimensionality.  For African Americans to have to live in relation to and feel it necessary to find their legitimacy in relation to that gaze is also to compromise and drain off their own unique spirituality.  That’s what I think you’re saying.  Is there anyone else in your circle of African American lesbian feminist writers?

JG: Ntozake Shange had a sense that there was a way for her to capture the beautiful energy women had with each other and that African Americans in general had with each other. She didn’t do it by going back in history as much as creating a dramatic place that existed just for her. “For Colored Girls….” existed in a very particularized place. Her other plays that followed it also were realistic but not realistic. Even when she adapted “Mother Courage” it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. She was able to place it in another world. Not like she put it on another planet or anything but there’s something about her writing that is other-worldly. I think she does that as a way of showing in sharp relief what Black people are all about.

MA: I’m thinking of Terri MacMillan because she has been such a popularizer of a particular African American female experience.

JG: Of a certain type. It’s very grounded in bitterness which is one of the things that holds her, I think.

MA: That’s interesting since she’s one of the more recent successful African American female writers. She’s post-60s, as you were saying.

JG: And her work carries the anger I was talking about.  She is also one of the funniest writers – she captures that humor.

I know that other ethnic writers have a similar need to find the place where they are most themselves. Is there some period or place or some idea where that community feels most itself?

MA: So what you’re saying is that it is this period – from the 50s to the early 70s where the most forward momentum and hope, the strongest sense of possibility existed and was activated within the Black community.

JG: Yes.

Editor’s note: I am thrilled to publish a conversation between Margie Adam and Jewelle Gomez exclusively on Epochalips. These two have influenced our generation by paving the way as feminists and out lesbians in the early days to continuing to share their gifts with the world today. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 , Part 5  and Part 6.

Margie Adam is currently fully engaged in her “third act.” Having completed a PhD Program in Psychology, she has entered private practice as an integrative counselor. She is also a singer-songwriter-pianist and one of the early organizers of Women’s Music, a Second Wave feminist cultural initiative fueled by lesbian passion. Her song, “We Shall Go Forth!” resides in the Smithsonian’s Political History Division. She is associate producer of two films, Radical Harmonies: A History of Women’s Music and No Secret Anymore! The Times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon. Margie’s counseling practice is based in the San Francisco-Bay Area, and extends world-wide with telephone technology. Her focus is on creating a safe, empowering, and joyful environment for women in transition to explore esp. sexuality, recovery, aging, and/or completion of projects. info@margieadam.com

Jewelle Gomez is the author of 7 books including the lesbian vampire classic novel, The Gilda Stories.   Follow her on Twitter: VampyreVamp.  Or her website: www.jewellegomez.com

©2013 Jewelle Gomez & Margie Adam. All rights reserved.

 ”So did you ever think of being with a woman?”

“No – I hated sex but I never knew anything about lesbians, or things like that…” And then she continued: “But there was this woman, she was a friend of my close friend…”

“When?” I interrupt, “where”?

“In Baghdad, I had a friend. We liked each other very much. She and her husband were Syrian, Muslim, they were very friendly with me. They didn’t care that I was Jewish. They told me I was different (from the other Jews in Iraq), I spoke English with them, I played piano, I came from Singapore, and I felt very free with them.”

They entertained artists and heads of state, they were sophisticated and internationally connected. Granny was not going to refuse their invitations even though she was supposed to socialize only within the large extended family she married into. Her husband’s family resented her. She was an “outsider,” an Iraqi Jew from Singapore. She wasn’t a relative. The family only married distant and sometimes not so distant relatives. And Granny, on top of it, was a rebel. She fought all the rules. To the day she died she talked about how she was forbidden to play her piano for months every time a relative died and the family went into mourning.”

Prayers, all the time prayers, why did they have to do it in MY house!” She yelled.

“They didn’t like me and I didn’t’ like them. Family, family, family, HIS family, mine were in Singapore where I wanted to go back. I couldn’t’ stand it there.”

But she already had my mother and her other daughter, she was stuck. One evening these friends had a party where Granny was asked a question she never forgot.

“Meeda, do you do finger exercises”? A woman she hadn’t met before asked her. “’Be quiet, she doesn’t know about such things”, the woman’s friend added, giggling.

“I was trying to understand what kind of finger exercises do you do for the piano” Granny said, “I was so naïve!”

One day, it came up, Granny didn’t remember how exactly, but her friend, the hostess of the infamous parties, informed her that the “finger exercises” had nothing to do with playing the piano!

“They were lesbian!  Maybe they thought I was one because I never came with my husband. Efraim, never came with me,” she added, still thinking about that time laughing. Its one of her favorite stories.

She looks at me smiling the same smile she had on when she asked me a question long ago in 1976 after taking one look at my new butchy lover.

Way past putting it in code, she said , “You’re with women now aren’t you?”  She was no longer a naïve 29 year old in Baghdad, Iraq. We were in San Francisco, California where it was all happening, and this time she didn’t miss a beat. And then she added “don’t tell your, mother she’ll blame me!”

Tell your love, tell your sorrow, all the days of your life, the nights, too! Ring out a true love story of your own from doorstep to doorstep. Express your glands, express your joy and your pain, howl the truth from out of your personal closet right into the hallway. You can cry if you need to: nothing grows without water!

I get all upset the way people hush themselves like it’s a virtue sometimes.  Casey said in her parents’ house they never got angry, they ate all the food on their plates, their closets were tidy, they just never spoke about it. She said there was nothing to speak of, it’s just that her brother was playful. He just got carried away, he was boyishly curious, that’s the natural way he expressed it, his first stirrings of manhood. She said there was nothing to speak of, she had no way to stop it, she was not always so strong or so big or so butch or so brave.

She said it doesn’t affect her adult life today, no, not at all, so there’s nothing to speak of, she keeps it all in the family. She said, it’s all relative, really, so there’s nothing to speak of, it’s not like real incest, so there’s nothing to speak of. It’s just all in the family, it’s all relative, really, so there’s nothing to speak of, it’s all relative, she said, it was only her brother, so there’s nothing to speak of, it’s all relative, she said, it’s all relative.

I may not know that much about life but I’ve been well tutored in loss and I know a lot about love and about the relative ways different people withhold it and snatch it away. But if there’s nothing to speak of then all words lose their meaning and I can never express it how sometimes she’s touched me and I’ve wanted to touch her, my Pagliacci sister, her practiced immaculate presence, her subterranean silence.

But If there’s nothing to speak of words can never express it, how the joy she unleashes flings open my floodgates, but we never expressed it, relatively speaking. Still  she touches me whenever she wants to and my own desperation allows it and wants it but she will not let me touch her in return, despite that the fit of our bodies strike sparks on the guilty blanket of need that we borrow. But if there’s nothing to speak of then all words lose their meaning and I’m stripped of all currency save for the stealth of her tongue and her kindling caresses and the way she moves into me with such rough sudden need that it hurts like a scalding but I only steam through my pores and my eyes start to rain, and later I staunch the flow of my bleeding after I stagger back home to my own lonely bed, sprawled out like a swastika, appropriately crimson, and I wonder and tap my only true gift and begin to write about the types of love we give and gift and take and endure and inflict.

But if there’s nothing to speak of I can never express it, at least not to Casey, how the heartache she’s known and the heartbreak she’s sown still fling open my floodgates and I’ve wanted to touch her, to heal her, but if there’s nothing to speak of I can never express it, how much I’ve ached just to tell her the many ways that I’ve loved her but she will not let me touch her and only shakes her head sadly and pulls me aside but every graze of her razor sharp lips leaves another keloid scar on the topographical map of my body and each one reads goodbye and goodbye until the next time… or never.

But sometimes even now just the memory of the stunning sound of her voice like a clarion bell when she forgets herself for even a moment and lets loose from her studious anchors and starts genuinely laughing out loud still sets me free!

Today I’m attending a fundraising event where lots of wonderful women will show up to support a good cause–and also, to cruise each other.  Most will put serious energy into looking good, and many will make the eye-contact-and-smiling connection that creates an opportunity for a conversation with a potential date.

Then the fun stops.  What if I can’t think of anything to talk about? What if she thinks I’m boring? What if I sound stupid?

Two guidelines: First, just do it anyway. At best, you’ll make a nice connection.  At worst, you’ll feel crushed or trapped.  Oh wait–that’s pretty drastic.  I meant to say, you may have some temporary moments of disappointment, but you won’t die.  Really, it’s true–everyone strikes out some of the time, but you can’t get on base if you won’t step up to bat.

The second guideline takes some thought:  Practice reciprocal conversations.  In other words, you should talk about 50% of the time, listen the other 50%.  I’m serious.  This is important, for many reasons.  Some of us talk too much, others too little, and how you balance these can predict how your relationship will go.

A friend told me about her first date with a talker.  After silently getting more and more irritated, my friend said “Do you know we’ve been sitting here an hour and a half and you haven’t asked me anything about myself?”  Not surprisingly, her date was embarrassed, but had the grace to turn it around.  She said she talks when she’s nervous, and hadn’t realized she was monopolizing the conversation.  They actually wound up dating for awhile, and the communication was more balanced after that initial debacle.

I’d like to point out that the reason it turned around was because my friend spoke up.  If she had sat quietly listening, and fuming, her date would have never known she was being such a turn-off.  I say this because many women will excuse ongoing chatter by saying “maybe she’s just nervous.”  Of course she’s nervous–so are you, but there are other ways to cope without chattering. And letting her go on and on doesn’t bode well for a relationship, unless you’re really okay with not having a voice.  I hope that’s not true.

To be fair, listeners can create a giant vacuum by not speaking. No one likes awkward silences, and talkers may sincerely think they’re helping the cause by filling the air time.  So if you’re a listener, your job is to push yourself to talk more.  Talk about yourself, your impressions of the event, your reasons for being there,  your job, your friends–whatever, just talk.

Most listeners worry about sounding dumb when they talk.  But I’ve learned,  from personal experience, not to worry.  Most people don’t listen with a critical ear, looking for flaws in how well you articulate.  What they notice is that you’re active and engaged in the conversation. And if they’re normal, they like this.

It’s true that some people are not normal, they’re “unique.”  Their own stories and opinions are uniquely fascinating, at least to themselves, so nothing you could offer would be worthy of their attention. Here’s your first clue: You begin to feel one-down, uninteresting, depressed.  If you don’t want to feel that way all of the time, don’t hook up with this person.

Recently someone wrote me a “Thanks for the 50-50 rule.”  Usually a listener, she’d been pushing herself to talk more on her dates, and guess what? She feels more interesting!  I give credit to her for stretching herself, and to her date for being able to stop talking and listen more. This is great conversation!

Our new single, “That was the Whiskey,” is available for purchase on iTunes. It’s based on events that took place when our lead singer turned, well, we actually do lie about our age. So it doesn’t matter which birthday it was. But it is loosely based on us drinking too much while celebrating with our friends, Vicki Petersen from The Bangles (yes, that was a slight name drop), Garrison Starr, Michelle Malone and Lori McKenna at the 30A Songwriters Festival in Florida. It was a fun night. In fact, it was a gay night. Because gay can mean fun, right? So take a listen to our new song. Come out (pun intended) and see us some time.

Antigone Rising’s Kristen Ellis-Henderson, is featured kissing her wife, Sarah Kate on the recent cover of Time magazine. Kristen and Sarah Kate have an amazing story. A few years back, they were struggling to conceive  and after several attempts they ended up both getting pregnant on the SAME DAY! They recently released a book, Times Two, which details their story.

Kristen is also known for being in the all-female, New York based band Antigone Rising. Catapulted into the spotlight in 2005 with their Hear Music/Lava Records debut release From the Ground Up, the band’s follow up studio album, 23 Red (distributed through Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records label – August 2, 2011) boldly claimed their place as a rock/country force to be reckoned with. Antigone Rising’s brand new single, “That Was The Whiskey,” (co-written with Nashville song writer Lori McKenna), is already getting praise from critics as a foot stompin’ country/rock mash up, perfectly marrying the band’s ability to rock with their gift for writing undeniably catchy songs.