This very simple, vegan and gluten-free soup is inspired by mushy peas, the popular English side dish of mint and green peas smashed together. In soup form, the cheery bright green color is early summer in a bowl. The sweetness of the peas is brought out by the refreshing mint and a hint of lemon zest. Serve with a crunchy garden salad and a hunk of your favorite bread, smeared with…

A year ago I told my therapist about my long-lived dream to move to Seattle. She asked, simply, “Why does it have to be a dream? Why can’t you just go?” I recited my usual litany of excuses—How would I sell our house? Where would I find work? What was I even qualified to do?—but she shrugged them all off. “Just go,” she insisted, “and trust that it will all work…

Part Three of ThreeWhen I was seventeen, I graduated high school a semester early and moved from the Chicago suburbs to Madison, Wisconsin. My desire to escape my problems—depression, drug-addicted and troubled friends, an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend—was so intense I couldn’t even wait the nine months until college started. My mom and my best friend helped me move into my new apartment, I completely broke down the moment they left. As…

Portrait artist Riva Lehrer’s groundbreaking work on identity and disability has been exhibited at such prestigious venues as the United Nations, National Women’s Art Museum and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Lehrer has been an invited lecturer throughout the United States and in Europe, and was the subject of the documentary Self-Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer. She is a professor of anatomy…

Are you as sick as we are of mainstream health and fitness magazines that front like they are all about you looking and feeling great but never make you feel great? Are you annoyed because nobody in mainstream health mags’ pages looks like you, and you can’t afford all the fancy gadgets they say you need to be a whole new you? And anyway, what’s wrong with the you that you…