The Resurrection of my Mother

We lost my mother suddenly July 19th and I have been in a state of shock since 6 o’clock that morning. Waves of grief have ebbed and flowed over numbness these last few weeks as my father, brother, sister and I have found ourselves in a world so foreign to…

Men and Stickers

I’ll be honest, I think about stickers when I start seeing men crawling around women’s Twitter feeds with their “Not all men” replies in response to a woman’s very honest and vulnerable tweet about being sexually harassed. Surely, these are men who need to be given a sticker that reward…

When Beasts Stir

            (when foolishly seeking            illusive and mythic beasts) open your hands to catch your breath             (dropping pain from memory) Peel away skins of bitterness and layer on freckled vulnerability. build pyres of looming specters, only to shred them for…

Hello December (It seems we’ve met)

I turn 40-years-old today, December the Second, and for some reason this age is supposed to bother me. Social commentary has preached from its pulpit for so long that 40 is a hard age for women, that women dread watching the 9 turn to 0, and they will do anything…

Five Revealing Paradoxes of My Abuse Recovery

Abuse recovery is the process by which survivors try to find their “normal.” Growing up with alcoholic and abusive parents, I don’t want to “recover” my past; rather, I want to find out who I am aside from the trauma that I have experienced. I spent twenty years hiding from…

When It’s About Death, Memory and My Friend

There are some things you don’t get better at with age and one of those things is knowing how to handle death. Even though we might think we know all the right answers by now, Death always has the upper hand. It doesn’t matter how many articles I’ve read on the…