Ruthie Ackerman

13 hours ago | romper.com | Ruthie Ackerman

I’ve always been proud my hands look just like my mother’s, even though we’ve had a strained relationship for most of my life. That’s because my mother’s hands look like her mother’s hands, and I never had a chance to meet my grandmother Ruth, although I was named after her. Somehow knowing my hands connected me to my matrilineal line gave me a feeling of belonging. When my husband and I decided to use donor eggs to have a baby, resemblance was one of my first questions.

1 week ago | oprahdaily.com | Ruthie Ackerman

I come from a long line of women who abandoned their children. Or at least that’s what I’d been told. For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard about how my great-grandmother Kitty and my grandmother Ruth ditched their kids because of men or money or mental problems—or all of the above. The stories about my own mother aren’t any easier to decipher. If you believe my father, he’ll tell you that my mother’s suicide attempts started before I was even born.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Ruthie Ackerman

The light in the bookstore bathroom was dim. Even so, I could see the blood on the toilet paper. I wiped some more to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, and then I stood up, grabbing on to the porcelain sink so I wouldn’t fall. Suddenly, I understood. I didn’t want to lose my baby. I wanted to be this baby’s mother more than anything I’d ever wanted in the world. I would do anything in my power to keep it alive. The trouble: there wasn’t much I could do.

2 weeks ago | time.com | Ruthie Ackerman

If you’d asked me in my twenties if I wanted children, I’d have told you “hell no.” But by my thirties, I’d softened. When my therapist asked me on a scale of one to hundred, how badly I wanted a baby, I blurted out that I was 55% certain. But this was still just the flip of a coin, essentially. I wanted a child slightly more than I didn’t want a child. I’d made pros and cons lists. Read books like Maybe Baby, an anthology of over two dozen writers on their parenting choices.

2 months ago | kirkusreviews.com | Ruthie Ackerman

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer. A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s. Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters.