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Why Maurice Sendak was delighted when a little boy ate the letter and drawing he sent him

Even the smallest original drawings from the "Where the Wild Things Are" author go for thousands of dollars at auction.

Maurice Sendak sitting in front of a large Wild Things picture
Clarence Patch/Wikimedia

Maurice Sendak published "Where the Wild Things Are" in 1963.

Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" is one of those timeless, classic children's books that holds a special place in the hearts of people of all ages. I read it so much as a child that I had it memorized when I read it to my own kids, and they will surely pass along the Wild Things love to the next generation as well.

Though "Where the Wild Things Are" is his most famous book, it's one of many that Sendak wrote and/or illustrated during his prolific career. We see his illustrative work in the "Little Bear" series, in "The Phantom Tollbooth," and dozens more—not too shabby for a largely self-taught artist.

Sendak's ability to tap into a child's imaginary world—both its light and dark places—was what made his work so beloved. But a story he shared of an interaction with a child in the real world demonstrates how well he understood his audience.


The story has been passed through multiple people and platforms over the years, but the website Letters of Note says it came from an NPR "Fresh Air" interview with Terri Gross in 1986. Gross asked Sendak to share some of his favorite comments he'd received over the years, and Sendak responded:

"Oh, there’s so many. Can I give you just one that I really like? It was from a little boy. He sent me a charming card with a little drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, 'Dear Jim, I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."

Those who know "Where the Wild Things Are" will recognize the boy's impulse in the line, “But the wild things cried, 'Oh please don’t go - we’ll eat you up - we love you so!'"

And those who know the value of original art will recognize that the little boy gobbled up a one-of-a-kind Maurice Sendak drawing that would likely go for thousands of dollars at auction today.

The fact that Sendak was tickled and saw it as the highest compliment is exactly why he could write so well for kids. He was able to tap into what made children different than grown-ups. But he also didn't talk down to them or pretend that childhood was all sunshine and roses. His childhood certainly wasn't a happy one and he was known for having a bit of a gruff exterior, but his ability to tap into the darkness of childhood without being overly frightening was unique.

"I refuse to lie to children," Sendak said in his final interview with The Guardian in 2011. "I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

Sendak passed away in 2012 at age 83 with 150 illustrated books to his name and the honor of being the most honored children's book author in history.

via Edith Lemay/NatGeo

Mia, Leo, Colin, and Laurent Pelletier pose on top of their camper van in front of adouble rainbow while in Mongolia.

True

“Blink,” a new film by National Geographic Documentary Films shows how a family with four children, three of whom are going blind, embraces life in the face of an uncertain future. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Lemay-Pelletier family but also a reminder for all of us to seize the day because all our futures are uncertain.

Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier are the parents of Mia, a 13-year-old girl, and three boys: Léo, 11, Colin, 9, and Laurent, 7. Over the last six years, they’ve learned that Mia and the two youngest boys have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease in which the cells of the retina slowly die. As the disease progresses, the person develops “tunnel vision” that shrinks until very little vision remains.

The diagnosis devastated the parents. "The hardest part with the diagnosis was inaction. There's nothing they can do about it. There's no treatment,” Edith says in the film.


However, even though the parents couldn’t affect the progress of the disease, they could give their children’s senses an epic experience that would benefit them for a lifetime.

“We don’t know how fast it’s going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life,” said the parents. Mia’s impairment advisor suggested they fill her visual memory with pictures from books. “I thought, I’m not going to show her an elephant in a book; I’m going to take her to see a real elephant,” Edith explains in the film. “And I’m going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can.”

The Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sebastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Leo inKuujjuaq, Canada.via National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky

This realization led to an inspiring year-long journey across 24 countries, during which every family member experienced something on their bucket list. Mia swam with dolphins, Edith rode a hot-air balloon in Cappadocia, and Léo saw elephants on safari.

Colin realized his dream of sleeping on a moving train while Sébastien saw the historic site of Angkor Wat.

“We were focusing on sights,” explains Pelletier. “We were also focusing a lot on fauna and flora. We’ve seen incredible animals in Africa but also elsewhere. So we were really trying to make them see things that they wouldn’t have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences.”

Cameras followed the family for 76 days as they traveled to far-flung locales, including Namibia, Mongolia, Egypt, Laos, Nepal and Turkey. Along the way, the family made friends with local people and wildlife. In a heartbreaking scene, the boys wept as the family had to leave behind a dog named Bella he befriended in the mountains of Nepal.

But the film isn't just about the wonders of nature and family camaraderie. The family's trip becomes a “nightmare” when they are trapped in a cable car suspended hundreds of feet above the Ecuadorian forest for over 10 hours.

annapurna range, blink, nat geoLeo, Laurent, Edith, Colin, Mia, and Sebastien look out at the mountains in the Annapurna range.via MRC/Jean-Sébastien Francoeur

As expected, NatGeo’s cinematographers beautifully capture the family's journey, and in the case of “Blink,” this majestic vision is of even greater importance. In some of the film's quietest moments, we see the children taking in the world's wonders, from the vast White Desert in Egypt to a fearless butterfly in Nepal, with the full knowledge that their sight will fail one day.

Along the way, the family took as many pictures as possible to reinforce the memories they made on their adventure. “Maybe they’ll be able to look at the photographs and the pictures and they will bring back those stories, those memories, of the family together,” Edith says.

But the film is about more than travel adventures and the pain of grief; ultimately, it’s about family.

“By balancing [the parents’ grief] with a more innocent and joyous tale of childlike wonder and discovery, we felt we could go beyond a mere catalog of locations and capture something universal,” the directors Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher, said in a statement. “Keeping our camera at kid-height and intimately close to the family, we aimed to immerse the audience in the observational realities of their daily life, as well as the subtle relationships between each of them. This is a film built on looks, gestures and tiny details—the very fabric of our relationships with one another.”

Ultimately, “Blink” is a great film to see with your loved ones because it’s a beautiful reminder to appreciate the wonders of our world, the gift of our senses and the beauty of family.

The film will open in over 150 theaters in the U.S. and Canada beginning Oct. 4 and will debut on National Geographic Channel and stream on Disney+ and Hulu later this year. Visit the “Blink” website for more information.

Family

'It's not Little Sun': Mom admits she's having trouble pronouncing her newborn's name

It was fine 'til other people tried to say it and now she's confused.

via JustusMoms29/TikTok (used with permission)

Justus Stroup is starting to realize her baby's name isn't that common.

One of the many surprises that come with parenthood is how the world reacts to your child’s name. It’s less of a surprise if your child has a common name like John, Mohammed, or Lisa. But if you give your child a non-traditional name that’s gender-neutral, you’re going to throw a lot of folks off-guard and mispronunciations are going to be an issue.

This exact situation happened with TikTok user Justus Stroup, who recently had her second child, but there’s a twist: she isn’t quite sure how to pronounce her child’s name either.

"I may have named my daughter a name I can't even pronounce," Stroup opens the video. "Now, I think I can pronounce it, but I've told a couple of people her name and there are two people who thought I said the same exact thing. So, I don't know that I know how to [pronounce] her name correctly."



@justusmoms29

Just when you think you name your child something normal! #2under2mom #postpartum #newborn #momsoftiktok #uniquenames #babyname #babygirl #sahm #momhumor

Stroup’s daughter is named Sutton and the big problem is how people around her pronounce the Ts. Stroup tends to gloss over the Ts, so it sounds like Suh-en. However, some people go hard on the Ts and call her “Sut-ton.”

"I'm not gonna enunciate the 'Ts' like that. It drives me absolutely nuts," she noted in her TikTok video. "I told a friend her name one time, and she goes, 'Oh, that's cute.' And then she repeated the name back to me and I was like, 'No, that is not what I said.'"

Stroup also had a problem with her 2-year-old son’s speech therapist, who thought the baby’s name was Sun and that there weren’t any Ts in the name at all. "My speech therapist, when I corrected her and spelled it out, she goes, 'You know, living out in California, I have friends who named their kids River and Ocean, so I didn't think it was that far off.'"

Stroup told People that she got the name from a TV show called “The Lying Game,” which she used to watch in high school. "Truthfully, this was never a name on my list before finding out I was pregnant with a girl, but after finding out the gender, it was a name I mentioned and my husband fell in love with," says Stroup. "I still love the name. I honestly thought I was picking a strong yet still unique name. I still find it to be a pretty name, and I love that it is gender neutral as those are the type of names I love for girls."

The mother could choose the name because her husband named their son Greyson.



The commenters thought Stroup should tell people it’s Sutton, pronounced like a button. “I hear it correctly! Sutton like Button. I would pronounce it like you, too!” Amanda wrote.

“My daughter’s name is Sutton. I say it the same way as you. When people struggle with her name, I say it’s Button but with a S. That normally immediately gets them to pronounce it correctly,” Megan added.

After the video went viral, Stroup heard from people named Hunter and Peyton, who are dealing with a similar situation. “I've also noticed the two most common names who run into the same issue are Hunter (people pronouncing it as Hunner or HUNT-ER) and Payton (pronounced Pey-Ton or Pey-tin, most prefer it as Pey-tin),” she told Upworthy.

“Another person commented saying her name is Susan and people always think it is Season or Steven,” Stroup told Upworthy. After having her second child, she learned that people mix up even the simplest names. “No name is safe at this point,” she joked.

The whole situation has Stroup rethinking how she pronounces her daughter’s name. Hopefully, she got some advance on how to tell people how to pronounce it, or else she’ll have years of correcting people in front of her. "Good lord, I did not think this was going to be my issue with this name," she said.

Homeless man catapults onto music industry's radar with viral song

You sometimes hear about how older stars got their start by simply walking into a soda shop or book store and someone with connections liking something about them. For instance, Charlize Theron has shared how she was discovered after making a scene at a bank in Hollywood by her agent, who would later cash her check for her and give her his business card.

You don't really hear many stories like that anymore. Most people are discovered after years and years of making connections the good ol' fashioned way. So when you hear about someone down on their luck getting launched into the spotlight, it's something people tend to celebrate because it's such a rare occurrence.

Andrew "Donut" Larsen has taken social media by storm after a video of him recorded some time ago by a stranger went viral recently on TikTok. Larsen was sitting outside of a gas station with his guitar when he asked someone to buy him a beer in exchange for him playing an original song. The song blew the passerby away, but with the song's recent virility, Larsen's life is quickly changing.


The song "Ghost of You," the original song by Larsen, started charting as soon as he released it. In a short time, he went from being homeless and singing for change on street corners in southern states to being flown out to Los Angeles and Nashville to meet with record executives. While it remains unclear if Larsen has signed a record deal, he recorded the single that grabbed everyone's attention in a professional recording studio.

@donut.larsen Thank you for all the support. Like and follow and I will keep posting more. 💚🍩 #music #blues #thankyou #FYP ♬ original sound - Dönut Larsen

The young rising star is also no longer completely homeless as he has been living in Airbnbs through people's donations from his social media account. "Ghost of You"sounds like a mixture of blues and classic country music, but it's Larsen's amazing tones and raspy voice that really sells the emotion behind the lyrics.

The original video made its way onto other social media platforms where it's also gone viral. People can't get over watching someone's career take off from the beginning, especially seeing where the musician started. Larsen even got to play "Gallon of Mad Dog,"another original song, at the TikTok office in Los Angeles after he was invited by the social media giant.

According to Larsen, who shares in another video that he has a manager handling his social media pages, he's working on professionally recording several other songs and looking for bandmates. He's hoping to release his next single soon, but in the meantime he's trying to get accustomed to the newfound attention while remaining focused on honing his craft.

"Quick update, we're in Nashville, we're at the Airbnb now. It's been a busy week. We've not really stopped since Sunday night. We've been recording and we've been talking to labels. We've been running around meeting writers and publishers, and playing parties, it's just been really crazy, really busy but things are going well," Larsen shares in a video update.

He thanks the people following along with his journey but is still in disbelief that people want to hear his music. Commenters have nothing but positive vibes to send to the newly discovered musician.

"Seen you on tik tok ab a month ago and ive been and now ur all the way in the state I live making music, its crazy. Wish you luck man," one person writes.

"Keep going with your style. I have played the TikTok ghost of you on repeat. Your style of music hits me right in the spot," another says.

@donut.larsen Things are going well! Were making things happen, folks!! #fly #donutlarsen #nashville ♬ original sound - Dönut Larsen

"Your singing touched my spirit and I’m certain other people feel the same. I’m rooting for you and pray you have the strength to endure all of your good fortune and what life brings you in the future," a commenter shares.

"Heyy, i’ve been following you since your first video on TikTok and I just wanted to say that you’re amazing!! and your songs hits!! I know that you’re one day gonna be one of the biggest artists," someone else writes.

During a live stream, which was uploaded to his TikTok page, someone asked how much his head is spinning from everything happening so fast. Larsen replied, "I somehow managed to stay in a pretty calm headspace, like I'm not shaking. I'm not freaking out at the prospect of everything," before elaborating. "It is pretty crazy though. I've never been flown out anywhere like that before so that's pretty cool."

@donut.larsen Ghost of you coming this friday, made a few adjustments so it sounded extra good for yall 🖤
♬ original sound - Dönut Larsen

In his snippet from his professionally recorded version of "Ghost of You,"he again thanks his listeners, saying, "I really can't thank y'all enough, 'Ghost Of You' is out now. This past few weeks has been so insane. I found a place to stay for a little bit, got in a studio, just dropped my first song. Love y'all this has been so incredible."

Right now it seems Larsen is still in talks with different record labels, but his fanbase is hoping he will be able to sign with someone soon. But for now the singer is off the streets living a surreal experience that his growing fanbase can follow along with. You can stream his single "Ghost of You" on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube and Deezer.

OPPO Find X5 Pro & Chris Liverani/Unsplash

Sometimes parenting tricks are deceptively simple.

Tantrums, meltdowns, and emotional outbursts are the bane of parents' existence.

Once they start, they're like a freight train. There seems to be almost no way to stop them other than staying calm and letting them run their course.

That is, until one dad on Reddit revealed his secret method.


A thread titled "Hack your youngster's big emotions with math" has every parent on Reddit saying, why didn't I think of that?

User u/WutTheHuck posted a simple comment on the subreddit r/daddit earlier this month.

"Heard about this recently - when your kid is having a meltdown, doing math engages a different part of their brain and helps them move past the big feelings and calm down," he writes.

"We've been doing this with our very emotional 6-yr-old, when she decides that she wants to cooperate - asking her a handful of simple addition and subtraction questions will very quickly allow her to get control of herself again and talk about her feelings."

So, basically, when the sobs and screams come on strong, having your kid tell you the answer to 3+3, or 10-7 is a good way to get them calm again, and fast.

OP goes on to call the technique "magical," and mentions that his 6-year-old is legendary in his household for her epic tantrums.

The unique trick became a popular post on the subreddit, with a few hundreds comments from dads who were intrigued and willing to give it a try.

A month later, the results are in. The math trick works wonders.

math problemsOK, we said SIMPLE mathAntoine Dautry/unsplash

What struck me as I read through r/daddit was how many follow-up threads there were that said something to the effect of:

The math trick worked!

One user wrote that when his kids woke up screaming from a nightmare, he responded with a simple addition question.

"Soon as my wife closed the door ... [my kid] wanted mommy and started yelling her head off. I remembered the math trick and went 'what's 2+2?' It worked like a charm; the screaming ceased by the second question," he said.

In a separate thread, u/LighTMan913 had a message for "whoever posted here a few days ago about having your kid do mental math when they're upset..."

"You're a mother fudging genius," he said.

"My 7-year-old got in trouble for being mean to his brother shortly before bed time. He was rolled over facing the wall in bed. Wouldn't say goodnight. Just giving mumbles into the bed that are impossible to hear for answers.

"Started with 2+2 and by the time we got to 4096 he was smiling and laughing. 5 minutes after I left the room he called me back in to tell me he thinks he figured out 4096 + 4096 and I worked him through his wrong, albeit very close, answer.

"Worked like a charm. Thank you."

It's not just random dads on the Internet. Experts agree that this method is a bona fide winner for dealing with tantrums and outbursts.

upset kidHelping kids calm down can be a challenge.Annie Spratt/Unsplash

Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and author, had this to say about the viral technique:

"When our emotions rise, our logic decreases. The more emotional we feel, the more difficult it is to think clearly.

"A simple math problem requires you to raise your logic, which automatically decreases the intensity of an emotion."

Morin says that the math trick basically boils down to a distraction. A distraction with the added bonus of re-engaging the logical side of a child's brain.

"If you do what's known as 'changing the channel' in your brain, you get your mind thinking about something else--like a math problem. When you shift your attention, your thoughts change," Morin says, adding that adults can use this concept when they're feeling overwhelmed, too.

"When a child is upset, don't talk about why they're upset or why a tantrum is inappropriate. Instead, help them change the channel in their brains and raise their logic. When everyone is calm, you can have a discussion about how the strategy works--and how they can apply it themselves when you're not available to remind them."

Now I just need to get my 4-year-old up to speed on basic addition and subtraction and I'll be made in the shade!

Nate Bargatze and Kenan Thompson star in SNL's follow-up to "Washington's Dream."

In 2023, “Saturday Night Live” struck gold with a historical sketch where, in 1776, then-General George Washington laid out his dream for the future of America after the Revolutionary War. The twist is that his dream is to promote a series of nonsensical American cultural quirks, such as the refusal to adopt the metric system and the arbitrary ways American English differs from the UK’s.

The sketch was a great send-up of the cultural differences that separate Americans from their cousins across the pond and stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze, as Washington, delivered them in a pitch-perfect deadpan.

The sketch was the second most popular from SNL season 49 and introduced the low-key stand-up comedian to a much wider audience. On October 5, 2024, Bargatze returned to host SNL and once again donned the powdered wig as Washington. This time, America’s first president addressed his troops, played again by Mikey Day, Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang, about his dream for America from a boat crossing the Delaware.


In the second “Washington’s Dream” sketch, the general tells his soldiers that he hopes the new country will "do our own thing with the English language."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"I dream that one day, our great nation will have a word for the number 12. We shall call it a dozen," Bargatze's Washington says.

"And what other numbers will we have a word for?" a soldier asks.

"None," Washington replies. "Only '12' shall have its own word because we are free men, and we will be free to spell some words two different ways." Which ones? "Doughnut, and the name 'Jeff'," he explains, noting that there’s "the short way with the J and the stupid way with the G."

Washington also plans to differentiate some living animals from those on our plates. "We will also have two names for animals: One when they're alive and a different one when they become food," Washington explains. "So cows will be 'beef.' Pigs will be 'pork.'"

"And chickens, sir?" Yang asks. "That one stays. Chickens are 'chicken'," says Washington. "And we will create our own foods, and name them what we want. Like the hamburger."

"Made of ham, sir?" Day asks. "If it only were that simple," Washington adds. "A hamburger is made of beef, just as a 'buffalo wing' is made of chicken." However, he assures his troops that a hot dog is not made from man’s best friend. "A real American would never want to know what's in a hot dog, just as they will never know why."


Just like the original “Washington’s Dream,” the sketch was co-written by cast member Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell, with Mike DiCenzo.

The bit was initially conceived by SNL writer Seidell, who was surprised by how well the counterintuitive casting worked. “I forget who we originally wrote it for, but it was very much a dramatic actor who would play more of a serious Washington,” he told Indiewire. “You can see that version of it, but in hindsight Nate was the perfect person to do it because it had this charm that I don’t know that it would have with a real powerful George Washington. An Academy Award-winning actor might have taken it too seriously.”

Here is the original "Washington's Dream" sketch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

SNL will return on Saturday, October 12, featuring host Ariana Grande and a musical performance by Stevie Nicks.

Sally Field took to Instagram to recall her 'horrific' illegal abortion at 17.

Sally Field, two-time Oscar winner and pretty universally beloved celebrity, took to Instagram on October 6, 2024 to share a harrowing story of being 17 and pregnant just before landing her breakout role as Gidget.

Field, 77, recalled living in a time before the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that affirmed the right to abortion in the United States (which, as we know, has since been overturned) .

"I had no choices in my life, I didn't have a lot of family support or finances…And then I found out I was pregnant,” she said, adding that "I still feel very shamed about it because I was raised in the '50s, and it's ingrained in me."

Without any safe, legal abortion options, 17-year-old Field relied on the help of a doctor who was a friend of her family to take her to get an illegal abortion.


“He drove me and his wife and my mother, in their brand-new Cadillac, to Tijuana." This experience would end up being "beyond hideous and life-altering," for Field and her family.

“We parked on a really scroungy-looking street, it was scary and he parked about three blocks away and said, 'See that building down there?' And he gave me an envelope with cash and I was to walk into that building and give them the cash and then come right back to him," she said.

Field received "no anesthetic" during the procedure. However, "There was a technician giving me a few puffs of ether but he would then take it away, so it just made my arms and legs feel numb weird, but I felt everything — how much pain I was in.”

This is when “the situation turned darker,” Field shared. “I realized that the technician was actually molesting me, so I had to figure out, how can I make my arms move to push him away? So it was just this absolute pit of shame. And then, when it was finished, they said, 'Go go go go go!', like the building was on fire. And they didn't want me there, you know, it was illegal!"

This all happened before Field’s life had begun, so to speak. "I'd never been out of the state, I'd never been on an airplane,” she said. And while she commended the doctor who helped her for his "generosity" and "bravery," as "he would've lost his license if anyone had found out,” she suffered nonetheless.

Still, after that, “fate, you know, something glorious outside of ourselves, whatever you believe, reached in," Field recalled. "And a few months after that, I began auditions. I didn't have an agent; I wasn't really an actor. I'd been doing it in high school constantly. And I began auditioning. And by the end of that year, I was Gidget. I was the quintessential, all-American girl next door."

sally field, sally field abortion, abortion laws, won't go back, kamala harris, election 2024A Sally Field with Don Porter and Betty Conner, 1965. upload.wikimedia.org

And here Fields really drove the point home, saying, "in reality, I was the quintessential, all-American girl next door, because so many young women, my generation of women, were going through this."

"And these are the things that women are going through now — when they're trying to get to another state, they don't have the money, they don't have the means, they don't know where they're going," she added. "And it's beyond, how you can go back to that and do that to our little girls and our young women, and not have respect and regard for their health and their own decisions about whether they feel they're able to give birth to a child at that time."

"We can't go back. We have to all stand up and fight,” she concluded, quipping, “and that was that lovely story."

The video quickly received a flood of comments from people thanking her for her honesty.

“Sally, thank you for sharing. As Brené Brown says, shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces. I see you, I honor you. Thank you for your voice in a time such as this,” one person wrote.

Another added, “Wow. It takes incredible courage to share something so intimate & painful.”

Many were compelled to share their own similar stories.

“I know my Mom had to go through something similar and her husband, my Dad took her. They could not afford another child. Reminds me of the Muriel Rukeyser quote, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth of her life? The world would crack open. Thank you for being one of those women who tell the truth.”

“I can’t believe I’m still telling my mother’s story! She’s been gone more than 20 years now, and would be appalled that we are fighting for this again! My mother, Mary Elizabeth Eyre-Letts, had an illegal back alley abortion in 1940s in Chicago. The guy would not marry her or pay, and the procedure was several hundred dollars – a lot at that time. To add another layer, she was legally blind and came to Chicago from a farm to attend a blind school. She said she ate scrambled eggs for weeks for lack of money to eat; and became anemic for loss of blood.”

“I went with a few friends to get legal abortions when we were younger. The young men that got them pregnant did not go with them. I, their gay friend, went with them. I see so many women sharing their stories of abortion, and I see zero men talking about how abortion saved their lives; The boys that got to go to university and pursue their dreams without being young fathers, the young men who didn’t have to pay child support payments to the woman that they were sexually active with, but not emotionally invested in. So many men are able to have the lives that they dreamed of because the woman they impregnated had access to a safe and legal abortion. And I want them to start talking about it.”

In a lengthy caption, Fields admitted she was at first “hesitant” to share her experience, but finally came to the conclusion that, “so many women of my generation went through similar, traumatic events and I feel stronger when I think of them. I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country."

Clearly, her intuition was spot on.