Where Abby Wambach Finds Hope
 April 10, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Yesterday, a historic event took place in the heart of New York City—Nona and I met for the first time in person, even though we have worked together over several years, not just here at The Meteor, but at a previous job as well. The good news is there was no frame-mogging, as the kids say, but the awful news is that our combined beauty overheated the room we were in. We will be kept separated until winter. In today’s newsletter, we celebrate the return of UNDISTRACTED with guests Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle. Plus, the worst-kept secret in America is revealed, and a new professional sports league crowns its champions. IRLmaxxing, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONEyes on the ball: Do you ever wonder why women’s sports feels like such a balm when everything else is…less balm-like? It isn’t just that visibility of women athletes themselves is on the rise. There’s something more to it, and soccer icon Abby Wambach—who, along with her wife, activist Glennon Doyle, was a guest this week on UNDISTRACTED with Brittany Packnett Cunningham—perfectly laid out what that something is. “It’s more than just watching women play,” she says. “It feels like something activism-adjacent.” Back in 2019, the USWNT began demanding pay equity, and Wambach was one of their most vocal advocates. Now, basketball players who were once using public restrooms to change before professional games have successfully negotiated a CBA that increased salary caps by 300 percent. And that didn’t just happen, Wambach points out—women worked together to do it, a strategy female athletes have had to employ for years. In the 1970s, “you’ve got Billie Jean King unifying a group of women to sign $1 contracts to create the Women's Tennis Association,” Wambach explains. Then “you have Title IX happening in the United States…and then you look forward, you see this boom of popularity. But what is never talked about and I think is so important is the reason why that happened was collective unity.” Wambach puts it this way: “It’s a very feminine idea that in order to have the most amount of people get the things they want out of their life, we have to figure out how to unify.” Oh, and you know what Wambach’s not feeling? The price gouging of the World Cup. “The sport competitor side [of me] is like, it's going to be such an exciting time,” she says. “But families…and fans can't go unless they pay like $10,000 for a ticket. It’s commodifying and corporatizing these things that have a beautiful essence. And I think that's why women's sports are having such a moment—because it's not totally commodified and taken over by the corporate landscape. Those people sitting in those seats…actually care.” To hear the full conversation (including Glennon on raising a boy in the manosphere) and get extremely hyped for what’s to come with women’s sports, check out the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.  AND:
ONE MORE THING...New York friends/theater buffs/feminists lookin’ for weekend plans: These are your last few days to see “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” at the Public Theater. Our colleague Cindi Leive and podcast host Regina Mahone (of The A-Files) sat down with the cast and creators after a performance of the play, which reimagines Antigone as a fierce young woman who happens to be pregnant and is defying her uncle Creon’s Thebes-wide abortion ban to do what she wants. In one of the play’s best moments, Antigone (the riveting Susannah Perkins) says to her uncle, Creon (Tony Shalhoub): “These ears, these eyes, this hair, these knees, if there's anything we have in this world, that's it. Your own body is it. The conversation with yourself that never ends.” “For me, that speech really is the heart of the play,” playwright Anna Ziegler told us onstage. “It's the moment when Antigone is claiming the dignity that her body deserves.” She does, and it’s worth seeing.  FOLLOW THE METEOR      Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Is your state pro-life or pro-death?
  April 7, 2026 Good evening, Meteor readers, The coverage of Artemis II’s voyage to the moon has been pretty heartwarming, no? It’s a rare moment of unity during a politically volatile time, probably similar to how Americans must have felt in 1969—except instead of witnessing “one giant leap for mankind,” we’re seeing Christina Koch become the first woman to fly around the moon on a mission that passes the Bechdel test. A marked improvement on an already nice thing! Speaking of unity, today we’re examining what red and blue states have in common in a post-Dobbs world. Plus, the ripple effects of the Iran war, and a highly suspect reading list. Artemis is a woman, Nona Willis Aronowitz   WHAT'S GOING ONDivided states of abortion: Yesterday, I saw two news items directly next to each other in my feed: One announced a new study published in JAMA finding that abortion pills are so safe that they likely meet the Food and Drug Administration criteria for over-the-counter sale. The other covered yet another arrest, this one in Texas, of a pregnant woman who had taken the exact same pills. In that moment, seeing these two stories in my field of vision, I experienced a kind of whiplash that has become familiar to me during the nearly four years since the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion. On the one hand, we now know that abortion pills belong in the family planning aisle of drugstores, and liberal states believe in the medication’s safety so much that many have passed laws to protect doctors who prescribe them for out-of-state patients. On the other hand, in conservative states with abortion bans, abortion doctors and the pregnant people they treat are criminals. Depending on where you live, abortion is now either basic healthcare or grounds for murder charges and extradition. When it comes to abortion, are we now living in two Americas? On a fundamental level of human rights, Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju tells The Meteor, the answer is yes. Simply put, women in states with abortion bans are “second class citizens” living in a “segregated society,” she says. “We should call them ‘pro-women's death states’ and ‘pro-women's lives states.’ I mean, it's that extreme…Those red states are willing to basically torture women in pregnancy and create conditions where they are actively dying.”  WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BE A FLY ON THE WALL AT THIS CONFRONTATION. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) But, Timmaraju says, the reality is more nuanced. In a sense, red states and blue states are in the same situation: They’re responding to a state of emergency—and they can learn from each other’s reactions. Some blue states are enacting shield laws, passing constitutional amendments, and funneling millions of dollars into abortion services. Democratic governors like Illinois’ JB Pritzker, Maryland’s Wes Moore, and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham “feel a heightened sense of responsibility to their neighboring states,” Timmaraju says, and “are going above and beyond to do everything they can to not just protect abortion care, but invest in access.” These states are modeling the kind of abortion-is-healthcare approach that all Americans are entitled to—which, as the midterms approach, is a good reminder that “you can change your elected officials.” But there’s a danger in thinking of abortion bans as a red-state problem, Timmaraju warns—in part because the goal of conservatives, who now control all three branches of government, is to make those laws, and those deaths, the norm for all of us. “I do think blue-state citizens are complacent because they don't understand the reach that [the Trump] administration has,” Timmaraju says. Dobbs was never going to be the last word on abortion; as we speak, the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services are trying to figure out how to restrict abortion pills nationwide. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency tasked its scientists with finding detection methods for trace amounts of mifepristone in wastewater—even though other scientists say there’s absolutely no evidence of this. (Suddenly Trump’s EPA cares about water contaminants?) Timmaraju says all the studies in the world affirming abortion pills’ safety will not stop these efforts. Republicans “already know they’re safe,” she says. “It's bullshit.”  MINI TIMMARAJU TO THE SUPREME COURT: THIS ISN’T OVER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) And in the face of this kind of federal oppression, women in more liberal states should take a lesson from those already living under it. Blue states will have to take a cue from “the resilience and the courage” of community organizations, abortion funds, and individuals in abortion-ban states “finding any way to have abortions because it's life or death for them,” Timmaraju says. Like low-income women of color and immigrants, whose access to abortion has always been restricted even before Roe fell, they’ll have to “find ways to make it work.” Ultimately, Timmaraju notes, the real divide isn’t some states versus other states anyway; it’s “governments and policymakers versus the people.” The majority of Americans support abortion rights, and have done so for decades. Even a slim majority of Republican women would be in favor of a nationwide law guaranteeing abortion access. It’s why far-right abortion extremists keep losing when abortion is on the ballot, even in red states like Kentucky. In other words, it’s only our government that’s divided. We’ve been united about abortion for a long time. AND
 WHERE CAN I GET THESE MERMAID-IN-TRAINING COSTUMES FOR MY DAUGHTERS? (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
And one more thing: April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. If you’re a survivor or if you know someone who is (i.e., if you’re a human being), take the Survivor Justice Network national survey, to help close the data gap for survivors.  FOLLOW THE METEOR      Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
A Secret School for Girls
Inside the clandestine network of classrooms defying the Taliban in Afghanistan
By Jessie Williams
A group of teenage girls and young women gather in a nondescript room with pale walls, chatting and laughing. They have just finished their classes for the week and are about to head home. But they must leave one by one, so as not to draw any attention. If someone asks them where they have been, they say they were visiting the doctor. If they think someone might be on to them, the teachers move their classes to another person’s house. They leave their books at home. They must not be caught.
These girls live in Afghanistan, where education for girls beyond sixth grade is banned by the Taliban. They attend an underground girls’ school – one of five an Afghan NGO quietly runs across the country, with 28 teachers in different provinces providing free education to around 1,000 students, ranging in age from 13 to 45.
“I was very unhappy when the Taliban closed my school,” says Ada*, 15, who was in eighth grade when the Taliban returned to power on a hot summer day in 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces. “I had depression.” The secret school she attends opened in the months afterward. “I feel better [now],” she says. “When I see the teachers and girls, I have power.”
As a new school year begins in Afghanistan, more than 2.2 million girls are currently out of school. But some of them are defying the ban. Over the past few years, classrooms have emerged in the shadows—cropping up in basements, living rooms and bedrooms around the country, away from the prying eyes of the Taliban, who have informants to catch people violating their strict codes. The schools use certain tactics to evade those informants, including staggering the timing of classes, so that some girls attend in the afternoon and some in the evening. If the girls think they’re being followed, they change their route. Madrassas, or religious schools, are still allowed, so if they are caught, they say they were going there.
The schools run by the NGO, which we can’t name for safety reasons, started through a network of trusted people in different communities. They cost about $60,000 to run each year, which a grant from the Frontline Women’s Fund, an initiative that supports women’s rights activists around the world, helps cover. One class was established and then another, and before long the network had blossomed into a web of clandestine schools, turning girls into what the Taliban fears most: educated women. “An educated woman changes the world,” says Laleh, 25, who teaches English at one of the schools. “An educated mother nurtures, trains, educates her kid. The kid changes the society.”
The Meteor spoke to the teachers and students over Zoom on the condition that we hide their identities. The stakes are high; if the Taliban ever found out about the schools, the teachers would be sent to prison, while the girls themselves could also face imprisonment and beatings. Despite the risks, the educators continue to teach. “When I was a girl, I studied chemistry. My father said ‘It's not safe to study.’ But I wanted to have a voice,” says Laleh. “When I teach the girls, they have the vocabulary to talk. It empowers me. When they learn, I think that I have done something in the world, that I didn't live a worthless life.”
Without education, she says, “our people don't even know how they should live and what their rights are…When half of our society is paralyzed, how can our country move forward?”
Since returning to power the Taliban has systematically eroded women’s and girls’ rights. Education for girls over sixth grade was the first to go, followed by barring women from university and nearly all forms of employment, then prohibiting them from playing sports, and even leaving the house without being completely covered and accompanied by a mahram or male guardian. The Taliban’s latest decree permits men to beat their wives as long as they don’t break any bones or leave open wounds.
The UN says that Afghan women are facing the most severe women’s rights crisis in the world, with many activists and human rights organizations calling it “gender apartheid”—a term meaning the systemic oppression, discrimination, and segregation of a specific group based on gender.
In January 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the supreme leader and chief justice of the Taliban, accusing them of crimes against humanity for the persecution of women and girls. But nothing has been done to enforce the warrants. Even worse, the international community has begun to accept and normalize the Taliban as the de facto government, despite its draconian policies—like establishing embassies in Kabul, welcoming diplomats appointed by the Taliban, and inviting them to international summits.
Meanwhile, cuts to foreign aid budgets have meant dwindling humanitarian support for Afghanistan, and while the UN has continued its operations in the country, it faces major challenges—the main one being the ban on Afghan women entering UN premises, along with a 50 percent funding gap for UN work, which makes it difficult to provide services directly to women at a time when they desperately need it.
"Maybe they will arrest me and I go to jail. But I have to do this.”
Many Afghan women feel like the world has forgotten about them. Mariam, the 30-year-old executive director of the NGO that runs the schools, was a head teacher before the Taliban swept through the country. She says the international community should be doing more. “For five years girls and women can't go to school. It’s terrible. But nobody is doing anything,” she says. “Why aren’t the UN with us?”
Mariam says there are many women who are struggling financially now that they cannot work, and girls are being forced into early marriages. At the same time, recent clashes with Pakistan and war in neighboring Iran are exacerbating the already dire economic crisis.
For these girls, the school offers a glimmer of hope in an increasingly dark world, giving them the chance to forge their own futures. Bahar, a 19-year-old with a wide smile, was in 10th grade when the Taliban closed the schools. “When I come here I feel so excited,” she says, giggling. “I feel complete and confident.” Her favorite subjects are English and math, and one day she hopes to become a psychologist. “Education is very important to me. When girls use education, they can help their family.”
All of the girls’ families are supportive of them attending the classes, despite the dangers. “I feel happy because I improve my skills in this school,” says one student, Lama, 18. She especially loves art because it allows her to express her feelings, but wants to be a doctor when she’s older. “I want to help my people, always.”
Rehan, 21, a math teacher, says when she was her students’ age, “I had these opportunities as a student and I felt great. They should become what they want; I always teach them to become stronger.” Many of her students are vulnerable, she says, and so she makes sure to focus on their mental health. “When I come to class I ask them, ‘How was your day? How are you?’ Sometimes many of them don't have a good situation at home. First, I make sure they are safe, that they don't have any mental problems. Then I start to teach what I planned. I like to make the class a safer place for them.”
As the students and teachers talk, it becomes clear: These are much more than just schools. They also seem to be sanctuaries for women and girls to connect, laugh, and dream with friends. They are like a family, and Mariam, the head of the NGO, is the matriarch. She calls the students “my daughters” and sees supporting them as her responsibility. “It's a very big challenge,” she says. “We are afraid [of the Taliban finding out]. Maybe they will arrest me and I go to jail. But I have to do this.”
Despite the constant fear, they all still try to find joy – even if it’s fleeting. They dance and sing together when no one is looking. These girls are growing hope in the shadows; they’re creating cracks of light streaming through the darkness. “Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry,” says Mariam. “Maybe when the Taliban go, we will get our rights [back]. We want a new generation to feel peace.”
*All names in the piece have been changed to protect the subjects’ identity.
Jessie Williams is a freelance journalist focused on international affairs, humanitarian issues, and women’s rights, with work published in The Guardian, TIME Magazine, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, and more. She has reported from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Ukraine, among other places.
The "Birth" in Birthright
  April 2, 2026 Greetings Meteor readers, Big news! UNDISTRACTED with Brittany Packnett Cunningham has been nominated for two Webby awards! Voting is now open, and you can support us by clicking here and here, and firmly instructing your loved ones to do the same The polls are open until the 16th, so send this to your friends, your family, a neighbor, anyone with an email address. And if this celebration of UNDISTRACTED is making you miss the show, then you’re in luck: Season Four is on the way!  In today’s newsletter, we focus on the people who would be targeted the most if birthright citizenship evaporated: mothers and their babies. Plus, a quick trip to the moon. Vote for UNDISTRACTED, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONStateless: Yesterday, the Supreme Court—and for a brief moment, Donald Trump—heard oral arguments for Trump v. Barbara, the case to determine whether or not the president’s 2025 executive order ending birthright citizenship is constitutional or enforceable. As legal experts have pointed out, the government’s argument is entirely based on openly racist notions of who gets to be an American. What Wednesday’s arguments also made abundantly clear is that Trump’s administration has been so hyper-focused on removing immigrants via all available avenues it hasn’t stopped to consider the logistics of this order, especially when it comes to the “birth” part of birthright citizenship. “Are you suggesting that when a baby is born, people have to…present documents?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked yesterday. “Is this happening in the delivery room?...Are we bringing in pregnant women for depositions?” Even most of the conservative justices seemed skeptical, including Amy Coney Barrett: “I can imagine it being messy on some applications…How would it work? How would you adjudicate these cases?” Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the man arguing on behalf of the administration, didn’t have clear answers. But he insisted that non-citizens who have children in the U.S. were “jumping[ing] in front of those who follow the rules,” as if having a child here would give those parents protection from deportation or detention. (It doesn’t.) The government may have shrugged at these questions, but we (and legal experts) are pretty sure of one thing: A ban on birthright citizenship would put enormous stress on the lives of expectant and new parents. In fact, this case only exists because of immigrant mothers who worried so much about the implications of the executive order that they sued the U.S. government. Over the last year, DHS has deported roughly 300 pregnant or postpartum women. Those who had U.S.-born children—like Heidy Sanchez, Cecil Elvir-Quinonez, and Nayra Guzman—were separated from those children by law enforcement. Under the 14th Amendment, these children are full citizens. But the government is proposing that instead of being granted citizenship, those children should provide evidence that at least one of their parents is a citizen in order to be considered for citizenship themselves. If they cannot do that, they will become, in legal terms, “stateless,” belonging to no nation and a citizen to nowhere. So where should those children go? Should we send them to jail? Or deport them? But to where, if they were born in the U.S? And how long would DHS wait after a woman gives birth to pursue a case against her—would agents show up in the recovery room at the hospital? At a woman’s six-week appointment after delivering? If a child is stateless and not subject to the “gift of American citizenship,” as Sauer put it, then are they also not protected by laws like this one, which confirms that abandoned children of unknown parentage are citizens? The end of birthright citizenship would, in the words of Samuel Breidbart and Maryjane Johnson of the Brennan Center for Justice, “create a new subclass of people lacking the full rights and protections long enjoyed by citizens.” Denied social security numbers, they would be without standard access to health care and education, and could “end up deported to foreign countries where they have never lived and where their welfare would be endangered.” All of this would create a culture of fear for everyone, immigrant or otherwise. “Under the new legal regime the order would create, everyone would be vulnerable to having their citizenship questioned,” notes Breidbart and Johnson. Even legal citizens would have to make sure they take their paperwork with them on the way to giving birth—or, frankly, to anywhere else. Think about that for a moment. If you were stopped right now on your way to the grocery store, how would you prove your citizenship? How would you prove your parents’ citizenship? Now imagine being asked those questions a woman in labor…or a five-year-old in the back of an ICE vehicle. AND:
 DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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Soooo We Read Lindy West's Memoir
  March 31, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, I cannot remember the last time I felt so betrayed by two people I don’t actually know. Summer House’s West and Amanda have confirmed their “connection” in a joint Instagram statement, and I am physically ill.  In today’s newsletter, we’re digging into another bit of online drama that has dragged almost every feminist you know into the ring. That’s right, it’s the Lindy West discourse, and The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz and Rebecca Carroll think they understand why everyone cares about this so much. But before that, let’s take a look at the news. Unwell, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
 Yes, We Read the Damn BookWhy Lindy West’s memoir has hit such a nerve BY NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ & REBECCA CARROLL  LINDY AT THE PREMIERE OF HER 2019 SERIES, SHRILL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) By now you’ve probably gotten wind of Lindy West’s new memoir, Adult Braces—which, among other things, details how millennial feminist writer West and her husband, Ahamefule Oluo, came to be in a throuple. After all, seemingly every single person on the internet has already given their two cents. So why, in our usually atomized pop culture world, is this story hitting a nerve? Is it because, amid misogyny’s comeback, we’ve become hyper-protective of our feminist heroes? Or because, as my colleague Rebecca Carroll points out below, it’s an “extraordinary confluence” of sex, gender, race, body image, and everything we’ve been debating for years? Or do we just all want to escape to a time when the latest viral Jezebel post was top-of-mind, versus, I dunno, war or the death of democracy? Eventually, Rebecca and I felt we had no choice: We had to read this book and talk about it. Nona: One thing that has irked me about this public conversation is that it’s clear much of the peanut gallery has not read the actual book. Now that we’ve both read it, what do you think? Rebecca: Two things can be true: The book can be good, well-written, and insightful, which I think it is. And the discourse around it can be messy. [One thing that the discussion about the book does get right] is that it sounds like Lindy is married to a narcissist. Early on she writes, “If there's one impressive/excruciating thing about Aham, it's that he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do.” I mean.  WEST (RIGHT), WITH HER PARTNERS ROYA AMIRSOLEYMANI (L) AND AHAMEFULE OLUO DURING A 2022 INTERVIEW ABOUT POLYAMORY. (SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE) Nona: Yeah, he doesn’t come off great. But I still believe she's telling the truth about her journey to break down her codependency and discover her sexuality, even if it’s messy. This is important with a feminist memoir, because my feminism is very much about revealing the complex truth of our lives and not squeezing them into a narrative, whether that's a conservative, socially acceptable narrative, or a narrative of what feminists think we should want. This dynamic is precisely the reason why Lindy was so afraid to be superhonest before, because her fans had her in a particular box, whether it was about body positivity or her perfect wedding. Rebecca: Yes, another thing that is very clear [from this controversy] is that if Lindy cannot choose what she wants to choose, that’s not feminism. It’s a foundational flaw of this historically exclusive movement: When people push back on its norms, there becomes a rift and a chasm. Which is why I'm very much like, “Burn it all down.” Nona: Besides the state of feminism, the polyamory element to this story has hit such a nerve. People are, for lack of a better term, so “triggered” by polyamory. They often don't accept it unless it’s a completely perfect relationship (which, of course, doesn’t exist). I am nonmonogamous and have read a ton about it, but even a casual reader can tell that Lindy’s initial desire for monogamy is extremely fear-based. She’s absorbed cultural messages of monogamy as a shorthand for being “chosen” and safe and honored. Rebecca: I don't agree. I don’t think it's fair to her instincts to say that her reasons for wanting monogamy are based solely on cultural messaging. Nona: But she herself questions why she’s terrified of nonmonogamy. She has a chapter called “Naked and Afraid”—which I have not seen cited once in the million articles I’ve read!—about her sexual repression, which she writes is “corrosive, stunting.” She’s always felt “shut like a vault,” in a “fat-girl apology cloak.” And she deeply wanted to break out of that! Polyamory, if it's done right, really respects the “unassailable separateness” of each partner, as the gawdess Esther Perel has put it. Lindy’s related conclusion—that polyamory can be an antidote to codependency—felt very earned, and very ignored in all the chatter about how this supposed feminist “let herself” be coerced into a throuple. Rebecca: And then there’s the race factor, which I think is really important. [Aham connects monogamy’s idea of ownership to slavery, which] completely preys on West’s white guilt and white saviorism that we as Black folks are always critical of. In the book, she talks about going to get this rental van, and there's this oversexualized Black woman emblazoned on the side of it. And she was like, "I can't possibly, as a white woman, drive this van into the deep South…unless the person who painted this image said, ‘Lindy, please drive my masterpiece far and wide for the culture.’" And I feel like that's essentially what Aham is saying to her: "Drive my masterpiece of polyamory far and wide,” as if he’s the one who invented the practice. Nona: Oof, yes. There are so many layers to this story! Rebecca: I think that’s why everyone is losing their minds over this book. It's an extraordinary confluence of everything that has been building in the zeitgeist over the past decade. It has gender norms and preferred pronouns and non-binary sexuality and performative millennial feminism and racial justice and body image politics. Among many other things, it’s making us look closer at the way a white millennial feminist married to a Black nonbinary male-presenting person [Aham uses him/they pronouns] continues to center herself. And the place that we’re working this out first is on the internet, on social media, where there’s this sort of default knee-jerk judgment and snark. But I feel heartened by the fact that all of these things have come together in this watershed moment. Nona: Really? To me this moment feels like backlash city; Helen Lewis gleefully pronounced millennial feminism dead in The Atlantic (and everyone from Roxane Gay to RBG caught strays). Why do you feel heartened? Rebecca: It’s an opportunity to look at human behavior while we’re still looking at, and caring about, human behavior. Apart from it playing out on the internet, it’s a wholly natural disaster involving real people with real lives, trying to figure out how to be with each other, in their bodies and emotions and identities. It’s so important to recognize that these things still matter.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Non-Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
  March 26, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, I’m not one for corporal punishment, but I do think the creators of “Age of Attraction” need to be taken to the town square and pilloried for a few days to think on their sins. In today’s newsletter, we unpack the ongoing Taylor Frankie Paul debacle. If you don’t know who or what that is, you have a pure heart and an uncluttered mind. Stay blessed. Plus a terrible new rule from the International Olympic Committee and a hearty slice of women’s history. Bringing tomatoes to the square, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe man treatment: Last Sunday, ABC was meant to premiere the latest season of “The Bachelorette” starring the queen of Mormon messiness, Taylor Frankie Paul, the lead of the hit Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (SLOMW). Instead, the season was pulled after a disturbing video of Paul was released by TMZ that showed her in an altercation with her ex-boyfriend/babydaddy/co-star, Dakota Mortensen. In the video, which was recorded by Mortensen in 2023, Paul is seen doing a number of things, including throwing three large barstools at Mortensen. At some point, one of those chairs hits Paul’s five-year-old daughter, who was sitting on the couch during the altercation. The response to this video has torn the internet asunder, with some justifying Paul’s actions as a response to whatever happened off-camera, and others equivocating and employing their new favorite term, “reactive abuse.” There’s also been a tendency, particularly among women viewers, to over-empathize with Paul for unleashing her feminine rage on a man whom she says has also abused her. In comment sections everywhere, there are notes that Paul is being punished so harshly because she is a woman, whereas Mortensen has lost nothing for his as-yet-unknown role in the 2023 incident (or for any of his alleged abusive behavior). I hate to be the naysayer in the group, but I have to call balderdash.  THE CAST OF SLOMW LAST YEAR AT THE PREMIERE FOR SEASON FOUR. ON THE HEELS OF THE PAUL/MORTENSEN VIDEO, HULU HAS PAUSED PRODUCTION ON SEASON FIVE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) The reality is that Paul is receiving the kind of treatment a man would in this situation. Let’s examine the facts. ABC knew from the start that Paul had pled guilty to aggravated assault in 2023—it was literally a storyline on SLOMW, and the police bodycam footage of Paul’s arrest was part of an episode. Yet they still chose to cast her in “The Bachelorette.” Hulu still had Paul star in subsequent seasons of SLOMW, where some of the other cast members alluded to Paul and Mortensen being abusive towards each other in front of Paul’s children. And we all watched, just like we watch abusers in the NFL. Compare this to former “Bachelor” Colton Underwood, who was accused of stalking and harassing his girlfriend in 2020. What was his punishment? Some negative online chatter, a 2021 documentary about his life, and appearances on not one, not two, but four reality TV shows. So when folks say, This would never happen to a man, what exactly is the this? Because what does happen to men is a lot of rah-rah about getting canceled and all of us yelling from atop the moral high ground to little effect. Similarly, when the news of Paul’s investigation first dropped, bachelordata reported that she gained 80,000 new followers. TMZ announced yesterday that despite three investigations into domestic violence incidents, Paul will receive her full paycheck for filming “The Bachelorette.” She also still maintains 50/50 custody of the child who was struck. While the two experiences are very different, the same thing that shielded Underwood now shields Paul: whiteness. As many people have been pointing out, the abuse we’re seeing does not occur in a vacuum, which is why Paul and Mortensen being young, white, and allegedly attractive need to be taken into consideration when we talk about their treatment. If Paul weren’t white, she would have immediately lost her job, as we’ve seen with other reality stars who have done less and gotten fired. And far worse can happen after incidents like this to women who are not rich and famous, like permanently losing custody of their children. As for Mortensen, he hasn't incurred the same scrutiny because he's positioned himself as the noble victim, a character that only works for white men. Taylor Frankie Paul may be in a freefall, but there is a golden parachute attached to her back—one that does not exist for regular women, especially women of color. The one thing we can agree on in this jambalaya of opinions is that we should all be held to the same standards when it comes to wrongdoing, regardless of race, gender, finances, or follower counts. We cannot allow a warped idea of feminism to trump the fact that harm was done to a completely innocent party—Paul’s daughter. We don’t know how much that child has seen, but what we do know, from watching the footage, is that she was silent until she was struck by the chair—which shows us that she has likely heard this kind of screaming and seen this kind of argument before; it’s been normalized. Children who absorb this behavior grow up to be adults who accept it or, at the very worst, act it out on others. When it comes to children witnessing or experiencing abuse, I am always Team Child. AND:
 SLICE OF WOMEN'S HISTORY 🍕Akasha Gloria Hull, a foundational Black feministBY REBECCA CARROLL Throughout Women’s History Month, we’ll be featuring women (or women’s movements) that aren’t on the typical media lists we see every March.  HULL AT A BOOKSTORE EVENT IN 2015. (FAIR USE) The Combahee River Collective, founded in 1977, looms large in the field of Black feminism, and rightly so: The organization was part of a movement and moment that would change the way we talk about social justice in America. Many people familiar with the group know its bigger names: founding members Demita Frazier and twin sisters Barbara and Beverly Smith, along with Audre Lorde, an icon far beyond her association with CRC. But there’s an unsung heroine who isn’t celebrated as much as she should be: Writer, poet, and spiritual warrior Akasha Gloria Hull, whose life’s work is a love letter to Black feminists. Born Gloria Theresa Thompson in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1944, she changed her name to Akasha Gloria Hull after an illuminating trip to Ghana in 1992. Then, around the same time she was Xeroxing passages from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for her friends and coworkers—a practice that would lead to a revival of Hurston’s work—Hull, then a professor of women’s studies, was invited to join the newly convened Collective (CRC). The group was formed out of the “absolute necessity for autonomous Black feminist analysis,” wrote Frazier and the Smith sisters in a letter to her. “We think that this chance to meet will be politically stimulating and spiritually regenerating.” She accepted the invitation, and a few years after joining CRC, she co-edited the seminal 1982 work All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave with Patricia Bell-Scott and Barbara Smith. It was the first Black feminist anthology of its kind and widely considered to have laid the groundwork for Black women’s studies. After that, Hull went on to publish a number of scholarly books, but her nonacademic work is where she gave herself the most freedom to explore the depths of her spirituality and imagination, thanks to the spiritual regeneration of CRC’s mission. From her 1989 collection, Healing Heart: Poems 1973-1988, she writes, in an untitled poem: “we love in circles/ touching round / faces in a ritual ring/ echoing blood and color/ nappy girlheads in a summer porch swing/ belligerent decisions to live/ and be ourselves.” And in Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women—which combines narrative storytelling and interviews with Black women writers and friends, including Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, and Toni Cade Bambara—Hull offers a meditation on a wide range of spiritual practices through a Black female lens, while also making a personal statement of becoming. Her work evolved from the undeniably life-changing connection with CRC, as she recalled in a 2004 interview with Monterey County Now: “That was one of the most exciting periods of my life,” Hull said. “United with others, zealous. … We really changed the map, changed the face of things.” Akasha Gloria Hull’s papers and photographs are available to the public at the Schomburg Center for African American Research in Harlem.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
"The system is not set up for men to live their truth."
Heated Rivalry showed us what could be—but for gay men at the top levels of pro sports, that’s still just romantasy
When Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie performed a portion of his Saturday Night Live opening monologue flanked by players from the men’s and women’s U.S national hockey teams, they formed a perfect pop culture panoptic. All at once, we had queer joy, the resolution of national sports beef, comedy, political commentary, and just a dash of pettiness for seasoning. While the moment bore the weight of so many things, that weight was shouldered entirely by sport, and where we as fans stand in our relationship to it.
For all the good that sports has given us, historically, it’s also been used as a tool of exclusion, with women, LGBTQ+ people, and athletes of color having to fight to exist in the courts, fields, and pitches they now enjoy. While there has been progress, it’s been slow and uneven. Over the last five years, 27 states have passed laws banning trans students from sports, and last summer, World Athletics mandated sex testing for women’s sporting categories—all in the name of “protecting” athletes from an amorphous queer menace.
At the same time, women’s sports have never been bigger, and incredible trans athletes, lesbians, non-binary Olympians, and bisexual baddies are all over our television screens.
But what about queer men? As Uncloseted Media wrote last year, there are “zero” gay or bisexual men actively competing at the highest professional levels of U.S. baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. That stat remains unchanged, but the success of Heated Rivalry and the current generation of queer athletes has many revisiting the age-old question: Why aren’t men coming out while active? When will we see hot hockey players kiss each other IRL? (I must note here that there have only ever been two hot men in hockey, Henrik Lundqvist and Martin St. Louis. They are both retired and, sadly, straight.)
“There’s so much performed masculinity that’s tied to men athletes,” explains Steve Granelli, Ph.D., a teaching professor of communications studies at Northeastern University. “It’s all rooted in this really toxic, very old understanding of gender roles.” That understanding is at the core of America’s Big Four—the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL—which have long played a major role in shaping our collective idea of what it means to be a man.
In the 150-year history of American professional sports leagues, only two men have come out while still actively playing. The first was the NBA’s Jason Collins in 2013, who announced he was gay in an article for Sports Illustrated, while signed to the Washington Wizards, and was widely supported by the league and the fans. (The loudest voice of dissent came from sports broadcaster Chris Broussard, who called homosexuality a sin on air.) Eight years later, the NFL defensive end Carl Nassib shared that he was gay in a social media post. In an interview with Good Morning America, Nassib said he was met with “nothing but love and support” by his teammates and his organization. He continued in the NFL until 2023, retiring as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer.
Since Collins, gay and bi men have slowly begun to take up space, just not while playing in the Big Four. Athletes across different sports have come out in retirement or after career-ending injuries, and it’s slightly more common to see queer men in a solo sport like tennis. Luke Prokop, an active player in the development league, the AHL, came out last summer. Earlier this year, inspired by Heated Rivalry, hockey player Jesse Korteum announced that he was gay and walked away from the sport when he was 17 because he didn’t think he would be accepted. In Japan’s B.League last year, Joshua Scott, an American basketball player who was a darling of the NCAA during his time at the University of Colorado, Boulder, came out publicly as bisexual.
Scott tells me that although he would “hear some off-putting stuff about what it was to be LGBTQ” in “a lot of locker rooms,” he never felt biphobia directed at him back in Colorado. That wasn’t entirely the case when he transitioned to the pros in Japan. “There was a season where, because there were different rumors tied to my sexuality, I received zero offers to play for a team,” he says. Not yet out of the closet, Scott felt he couldn’t combat the rumors publicly without doing more damage to his career. “The system is just not set up to help men be able to live their truth, and that starts at the youth level.”
Still, “being out and playing has been one of the most rewarding experiences,” he says. Scott announced that he was bisexual on social media, intentionally choosing to skirt Japanese media, which leans conservative. Since then, “I’ve gotten to almost have it all in a way I didn’t even think was possible four or five years ago.” Part of “having it all” has been success on the court, with Scott being one of his league’s top five players in rebounds and averaging a 62.4% field goal percentage. He also learned he “wasn’t alone,” he says. “There are a lot of people within the industry that are searching for a way to have both their truth and to be able to just do their sport.”
So far, that search has not borne fruit within the Big Four, where even straight players feel a pressure to hew to traditional roles. Granelli, who specializes in the study of sports culture and fandom, cites NFL player Caleb Williams, who is straight, as an example of just how little room men are given to express themselves outside the “acceptable” constraints of masculinity. “Williams comes into the NFL, and there’s such a focus on him painting his nails,” Granelli says. Williams, who is now a quarterback for the Bears, received a lot of negative feedback and questions for his personal style, which included themed nail sets; rapper Lil Wayne commented, “We just lost a playoff game to a [expletive] w purple nails we fkn suck” after the Packers lost to the Bears in January. “When men challenge the expected presentation of an athlete in any way, there is immediate backlash,” Granelli says. Fans eventually came around to Williams and his nails, but only after he’d put on a winning display of masculinity on the field.
Conversely, women athletes have created an entirely different space. “There’s a strong understanding [in women’s sports] that there’s a huge spectrum in terms of player sexuality,” says professional soccer player Tierna Davidson. A center back for Gotham FC, Davidson has been an out lesbian for her entire career and married her former teammate Alison Jahansouz in 2024. She says that women’s soccer specifically “has fostered a safe and welcoming environment for queer people”; sexual orientation was “never something I was worried about.” Davidson also gives some of the credit for this openness to fans. “If you look at the birth and nurturing of women's soccer in the U.S., there were so many strong, queer characters in that story,” she says. Women’s soccer “attracts fans that feel seen and represented, and it helps make our environment more open and welcoming. We don’t always get it right, but fans definitely see it and want to be part of it.”
On the men’s sports side, that fan-player relationship is just as key in determining how an athlete is received. “It only takes one moment, one small thing, for fans to feel a certain disconnect with a player and turn against him,” Granelli explains. “I mean, look at Josh Allen.” Allen, the beloved (straight) quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, had long been considered by fans as “one of us,” but upon his marriage to actress Hailee Steinfeld, a small subset of the Bills Mafia started calling him a sellout. “Dating someone from Hollywood is what makes him not like us?” Granelli, a lifelong Bills fan, groans. “He’s never been one of us! He’s 6’5” and has more talent than we’ll ever understand. But that’s all it takes for some people: One moment of not being able to identify with a player.”
Reimagining men’s sports to be more inclusive then becomes a chicken-and-egg quandary. Whose openness—an athlete’s, a fandom’s, or an organization’s—must come first to secure the openness of the other in a system that is built to be symbiotic? We are meant to see our most aspirational selves in athletes, and they, in turn, are made to feel secure and valued by our love. But too often the love of a fan does not extend to the fullness of an athlete’s persona, and if an athlete knows he cannot be fully himself and still receive that love, then why should he risk it? Women and trans athletes have more room to negotiate that risk because it is ever-present—they open their eyes in the morning, and that risk looms over them. But for men, who are shielded from bias by their athleticism and an assumed idea of masculinity, coming out means asking them to give up the one shred of safety they may feel they have.
Scott is hopeful that, eventually, that will all change. “There’s that adage that real men don’t cry,” he says. “But the beautiful part about sports is the passion, the anger, the disappointment, the tears and, yes, sometimes crying…[when I was closeted] I didn’t want to be exposed or have others think I was weak. But since coming out, I find myself stronger for walking in my truth.”
"I Was Floored..."
  March 17, 2026 Howdy Meteor readers, Happy Women’s March Madness season to all who celebrate!  In today’s newsletter, Ann Vettikkal speaks to three New York moms about what it would mean for them to access free childcare through Mayor Mamdani’s proposed universal 2-K program. Plus, an AI battle looms upstate and a double slice of women’s history. Rooting for South Carolina again, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONAffordability in real time: The victory speech Zohran Mamdani gave the night he was elected mayor of New York City ended with a familiar call-and-response. “Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal…” Mamdani began. “Childcare!” the crowd shouted back. And earlier this month, just a few weeks into his tenure as mayor, Mamdani announced that 2,000 daycare spots for two-year-olds in primarily low-income parts of New York would be available in the fall, with plans to expand “2-K” universally in the next four years. The Meteor spoke to working parents raising young children in New York City to understand the financial, physical, and emotional costs of parenthood in an expensive city—and what Mamdani’s plan for universal childcare could mean for them.  EVERYONE'S FAVORITE MAYOR DURING THE CHILDCARE PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT WITH NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) “I just felt such an incredible sense of relief.”—Roona Ray, a part-time healthcare worker whose wife works in costume design. They live in Jackson Heights, Queens; have a 5 year-old, 3 year-old, and 2 year-old; and currently pay $1,400 a month for childcare. “I actually started as a single mom by choice. And then I met my partner, and we decided to get married. My mother-in-law really helped a lot in the first few years. But then I got fired from my job when I was nine months pregnant with my third child, and that really set us in a tailspin. And I broke my foot and… I didn't work for a long time. It was very hard to take the time to look for work, because I was just too knee-deep in parenting. It was a very stressful time. We applied for childcare vouchers and got them, so we did have some help from the state, but it took a number of trials to apply. The paperwork is very confusing. I went back to work a couple of months ago, and it's been a big adjustment. I think a lot of people are just running on empty all the time and that's a very bad feeling. Luckily, I was able to find a job where I work four days a week. Our older two kids are in public 3-K and kindergarten. The youngest one is in a home daycare. So we've been paying for her [with] cash. We have seven more months of paying for child care…[before] we get to 3-K. [Accessing 2-K childcare] would be really great for us, just to save us a few months paying for child care. I think it could be really wonderful for so many parents, and just give so much relief.” AND:
 DOUBLE SLICE OF WOMEN'S HISTORY 🍕🍕Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, feminists of faithBY SHANNON MELERO Throughout Women’s History Month, we’ll be featuring women (or women’s movements) that aren’t on the typical media lists we see every March.  A PORTRAIT OF SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ PAINTED BY MIGUEL CABRERA, 1750. (NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM, MEXICO CITY, MEXICO) In the beginning was the Word, and that word was decidedly not “feminism.” But the work of liberation has long been in motion even before we had a word to package it together. In the late 1600s, Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez, a Mexican woman born under Spanish colonial rule, became one of the early champions of feminism by doing something most modern women would shudder to consider: She joined a convent. De Asbaje y Ramírez would take on the name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, becoming a poet and fierce advocate for women’s right to education. She understood that “her desire to learn was an impulse given to her by God,” explains Latina feminist theologian Theresa A. Yugar. Sor Juana also believed that having opinions was central to understanding God. “She said it was better for women to be educated by women, because being educated by men could cause innumerable harm and women could be violated,” says Yugar. While serving the Church, Sor Juana published stage plays, mathematical treatises, social manifestos, and criticisms of homilies. For this, she was silenced, her works suppressed until the 20th century, when she was recognized as the first published feminist of New Spain. While Sor Juana was the first, she certainly was not the last. Three hundred years after her death, another prominent theologian helped develop a new understanding of the unique relationship between Latinas, God, and the struggle for liberation. Her name was Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, the mother of mujerista theology. Isasi-Diaz, a Cuban immigrant, joined the Ursuline order as a novice in her twenties, but eventually left the order to pursue a doctoral degree at a seminary school. She believed that women should be ordained within the Catholic Church (a debate that continues to this day) and wanted to become a priest. But within the Church that was a non-starter, so Isasi-Diaz became the next best thing: a professor shaping the lives of Latine PhD students at Drew University. Her work helped make feminist thought and practice accessible to Latines of faith who were often left out of mainstream American feminist movements, even though they were quite literally in the room. (Xicanisma also took on this work of centering Latine people, but with less of a focus on faith.) Her work echoed that of Audre Lorde, who “taught us early on that unless we created new methods for doing theology we would not effectively dismantle the…[traditions] that have excluded women…for ages,” Isasi-Diaz wrote in “Lo Cotidiano: A Key Element of Mujerista Theology.” She goes on to explain that mujeristism prioritizes the liberation of Latine women and calls for centering their “cotidiano”—the realities of their everyday lives—and “not an abstract faith but the faith that sustains grassroots people in their daily living.” The relationship between faith and modern-day feminism is still fraught, particularly when it comes to the Catholic Church. But these women exemplify that there is a place where the two things can meet and, God willing, get us closer to the fully realized dream of collective liberation.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
What Free Daycare Would Mean to New York City's Parents
Three women on the insanity of childcare costs, and how Mayor Mamdani's plan would change that
By Ann Vettikkal
The victory speech Zohran Mamdani gave the night he was elected mayor of New York City ended with a familiar call-and-response. “Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal…,” Mamdani began. “Childcare!” the crowd shouted back. And earlier this month, just a few weeks into his tenure as mayor, Mamdani announced that 2,000 daycare spots for two-year-olds in primarily low-income parts of New York would be available in the fall, with plans to expand “2-K” universally in the next four years.
The Meteor spoke to working parents raising young children in New York City to understand the financial, physical, and emotional costs of parenthood in an expensive city—and what Mamdani’s plan for universal childcare could mean for them.
“I just felt such an incredible sense of relief.”
—Roona Ray, a part-time healthcare worker whose wife works in costume design. They live in Jackson Heights, Queens; have a 5 year-old, 3 year-old, and 2 year-old; and currently pay $1,400 a month for childcare.
“I actually started as a single mom by choice. And then I met my partner, and we decided to get married. My mother-in-law really helped a lot in the first few years. But then I got fired from my job when I was nine months pregnant with my third child, and that really set us in a tailspin. And I broke my foot and… I didn't work for a long time. It was very hard to take the time to look for work, because I was just too knee-deep in parenting. It was a very stressful time. We applied for childcare vouchers and got them, so we did have some help from the state, but it took a number of trials to apply. The paperwork is very confusing.
I went back to work a couple of months ago, and it's been a big adjustment. I think a lot of people are just running on empty all the time and that's a very bad feeling. Luckily, I was able to find a job where I work four days a week. Our older two kids are in public 3-K and kindergarten. The youngest one is in a home daycare. So we've been paying for her [with] cash. We have seven more months of paying for child care…[before] we get to 3-K.
[Accessing 2-K childcare] would be really great for us, just to save us a few months paying for child care. I think it could be really wonderful for so many parents, and just give so much relief.”
“It actually made me feel a little bit better about having another child.”
—Nancy Keith, a scientist whose husband works in the restaurant industry. They live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a one-year-old, and pay $26,000 a year for childcare.
“Luckily for me, I had pretty good maternity leave benefits, so I was able to stay with my baby for about six months. My husband took some time off of work beyond the New York parental leave. We were really trying hard to bridge the gap ourselves so that we wouldn't have to pay for child care on a daily basis.
I was floored when I learned how expensive child care can be annually. Even the non-fancy [daycares] are quoting so much. What we pay is on the lower end compared to other people. I feel lucky in that sense. But between rent and childcare, that's where a lot of our money goes.
I was very excited to hear [about universal childcare], and it actually made me feel a little bit better about having another child. My husband and I are in our late 30s, and we waited a bit before we felt like we could financially be ready for a child. Even now, it's still tough with daycare costs, and we're both working full time. Having something like universal childcare in place would really motivate more people to not be too afraid to have kids. Knowing how much everything costs in New York, adding in a child can really impact your decisions. Knowing that there are these initiatives makes me want to stay in New York.”
“I need a full time job so I can pay for childcare so I can find a full time job.”
—Ankita Chachra, a freelancer with a background in urban design, lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, with her husband, her three-year-old, and her nine-month-old. They pay approximately $60,000 a year for childcare.
“I moved to New York City in 2012. But between 2020 and 2023, we were in the Netherlands, and my son, my three-year-old, was born in the Netherlands. So I had maternity benefits and paid care leave. But we decided to move back to Brooklyn for a few reasons. One, we had a house here. Second, we just love the city. And third, we would be closer to at least my husband's family, who's in Chicago; my family's in India. Sometimes the answer [to childcare gaps] is actually family and friends who are available.
We would look at our mortgage amount and then the daycare costs. And oftentimes, the daycare costs were higher than the mortgage. It was like almost having a second mortgage. We were actually really concerned when we found out that we were going to have a second child, because my husband had been on a loan forgiveness program [which was] about to expire, and those costs were going to come back up. And I was moving into freelancing; I didn't have a paid family leave plan.
I need a full-time job so I can pay for childcare so I can find a full time job. It's not just about having [universal] childcare. I think it's recognizing that we need quality childcare, but we also need options, like being able to pay family and friends for the time that they're spending. I'm excited that this is happening and that it's being talked about. And I also like the fact that childcare finally is being [treated]—at least in some situations—as a public good.”
Ann Vettikkal is a recent graduate of Columbia University, where she reported on labor issues and the 2024 campus protests; edited the long-form, narrative magazine The Eye; and hosted a weekly show for the student-run radio station WKCR.
Lipstick, Selfies, and Prosthetic Legs
Gaza is home to the world’s largest group of child amputees. A photographer documents the lives of two of those children, who are still healing and waiting.
By Eman Mohammed
Layan’s first request after her surgeries was simple: She wanted to wear dresses again.
Before the bombing, she loved how fabric moved when she spun, how a skirt could flare and turn an ordinary hallway into a stage. After she lost both of her legs in an Israeli airstrike on her home in Gaza, dresses became a negotiation with balance, stitches, and pain. Learning to walk again meant relearning her body, figuring out how to trust it enough to stand inside the clothes she missed.
Layan is not the only child from Gaza learning to adapt to life-altering injuries. The United Nations has reported that Gaza is now home to the world's largest cohort of pediatric amputees per capita, with more than 4,000 children losing limbs since October 2023.
Most of those children remain in Gaza, with little hope of being evacuated to receive rehabilitation in a safe environment. Since October 2023, organizations like HEAL Palestine have facilitated secure passage for 62 children to the United States through medical visas, but in August 2025, those visas were suspended for Palestinian passport holders. Extensions quietly disappeared. When treatment ended, the Trump administration required their return. HEAL Palestine pledged not to send any Palestinian child back into an active genocide, and since then, those who could not remain in the U.S. have been placed in temporary housing in Cairo, waiting for borders to open, for stability to return, and for a future that does not yet exist.
Layan, 14, was one of the children who were granted medical evacuation to the United States through Heal Palestine. She arrived in Chicago in March 2024, and her host family has navigated lawyers, deadlines, and a system built to send her back before she was ready, fighting to keep her in the country while she relearns how to walk on both prosthetic legs. For now, her healing continues there, and she’s back in school. She still wants to go back to Gaza, not out of nostalgia, but because it is the only place that feels complete. Return remains blocked under Israeli restrictions.
Rozan, 13, understands interruption in a different way. After her evacuation for treatment, she was sent back to Egypt to wait for the borders to open. She lives with another family sponsored by HEAL Palestine, a mom and a three-year-old from Gaza. Her time in Cairo stretched from temporary to indefinite. Rozan lost her leg and seventeen members of her family in a single Israeli airstrike. The number sits in the room even when no one says it, but she doesn’t perform grief. She draws, studies, argues about outfits before school, and laughs when clay collapses in her hands on a pottery wheel, then tries again.
Neither girl fits the story people want from them. They are not symbols of unmitigated triumph. Their days revolve around prosthetic fittings, therapy schedules, visa deadlines, and the long logistics of survival. Healing is technical work. It takes money, translators, housing, doctors, tutors, and adults willing to build a net strong enough to hold children who have already fallen too far. That net exists because a community refused to let them disappear.
HEAL Palestine and the families around it function less like charity and more like extended kin. Apartments become shared recovery spaces. Older children teach new arrivals how to balance on unfamiliar legs. Caregivers trade information about clinics, schools, immigration rules. The girls grow inside that ecosystem of attention. Their resilience is not solitary, it is built collectively, reinforced by people who keep showing up.
In the afternoons, Rozan’s apartment fills with ordinary noise. A ball skids across the tile. Someone shouts. Someone laughs. Inside that chaos is the thing policy could not erase: children insisting on motion, and a community answering by making sure they never have to move alone.
Click on the images below to view the photo gallery.
Eman Mohammed is an award-winning Palestinian photojournalist from Gaza and Senior TED fellow. Her work has been featured in Le Monde, VICE, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and more.