All posts of Mia Pohlman

from the editor, Winter 2024: Give

We were on an archaeological dig in the Andean Highlands of Peru and had gotten back from the field for the day; the children from the village were waiting for us. I didn’t speak Spanish, but one of the field school directors had brought out some pencils and a few sheets of paper for the […]
3 weeks ago

Give Your Time to Something You Care About: Shut Up & Write!

Michelle Jenson, co-host of the Cape Girardeau chapter of Shut Up & Write!, remembers the first story she ever wrote: on three pages of notebook paper, a cat got trapped in a trash bin, and a rat rescued him. She wrote it while in the fourth grade, and it started her lifelong love for writing. […]
3 weeks ago

Give Your Time to Something You Care About: It Takes a Village

According to World Population Review, the state of Missouri is 31st in the nation for infant mortality, where No. 1 is best and No. 50 is worst. According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, from 2017 to 2021, Missouri had 32.2 pregnancy-related deaths for every 100,000 live births, barely avoiding the category […]
3 weeks ago

Give Your Time to Something You Care About: Runnin’ Wild Trail Running Club

Anna Nordwald, naturalist at Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center, started running in high school. Raised in Central Missouri, she often ran on her family’s farm or on the surrounding county roads, enjoying that the pastime allowed her to be outside. As a volleyball and softball player, she wanted to try something new, so she quit […]
3 weeks ago

meet along the way: Dr. Loretta Prater and Her Sisters

This story was first published as “Finding Family: Loretta Prater, who grew up an only child, connects with her 15 siblings through DNA testing in her 70s” in the October 2024 issue of The Best Years. Hello, my name is Cynthia Simmons Logan. I’m calling to speak with Dr. Prater. I’m responding to an Ancestry […]
4 weeks ago

from the editor Fall 2024: Body

Our bodies are vessels that are very good. They mediate our experiences with the world and are truly awe-inspiring in what they can do — so nuanced, so detailed, so intentionally relational. But too often, this wonder and awe isn’t what women experience in relation to our bodies, and especially in regards to the most […]
4 months ago

A Look at Period Poverty

A Lifetime of Bleeding: How much do women spend on period products? We calculated the cost of having a period at approximately $7,500, spent on organic pads, tampons and pantyliners, over a lifetime of menstruating — not adjusted for price inflation throughout the 30 to 40 years a woman will spend menstruating; estimates from other […]
4 months ago

How We Work: The menstrual cycle

Fact-checked by Kimberly Luedecke, RN, BSN, CFCP As women — and as men — we’re not always taught the intricacies of how the female body works and what each signal the body gives to us means. Here, we want to rectify that, so you can be empowered to understand and advocate for your body. Let’s […]
4 months ago

The Female Reproductive System: Let’s learn about our bodies

In a 2016 U.K. survey, fewer than one-third of women were able to correctly name and identify six parts of their own reproductive system, according to the book “Pain and Prejudice: How the Medical System Ignores Women — And What We Can Do About It,” by Gabrielle Jackson, published in 2021. If you’re wondering if […]
4 months ago

Lack of Women in Medical Studies Creates Barriers to Healing

Often throughout history, women’s pain has either been dismissed, found to have an unknown cause, or labeled by the medical system as hysteria or mental illness. This is in part due to cultural taboos that surround talking about women’s bodies and in part due to our health care system’s historical bias against women. Historically, male […]
4 months ago