When I sit down to write fictional stories, the setting is always the same, and the setting is way out west in California. I don't know other places well enough, and even if I grow to, which I might now that I live in the Midwest, my bones quite literally grew to their capacity in…
Tag: courage
Mother Shower
I had a dream the other night about a brand-new mother in some nebulous ancient culture being showered with immense love, affection, celebration, and tender care. Flowered garlands and feet massaged in oil abounded. Certainly, attention was also paid to the small child, but much of the community in this dream was tending to the…
And I Will Tell About It
What do we share when we stop hiding ourselves away? This is, of course, the internet, social media, the shame over guilt culture of appearance and perfection, and in these realms we skirt the truth, muddy it up, maybe forgo it all together. What happens when we decide, I'm going to share it? We're free.…
The Relief of Vulnerability
Note: As I share this I realize there are multiple layers to the vulnerability I am speaking about, and here are two - the actual act of being vulnerable with my husband that you are to read about read below, and the vulnerability of writing it down and sharing it on my blog and social…
Could You Be Loved
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "if you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you best teach it to dance." Oh how some of us toil to be rid of our pasts or our character flaws or our deepest, darkest secrets. Maybe instead, we ought to hang out and have a little fun with…
Widening Rings
When you first start feeling less afraid, you want someone to pinch you. Is this real? And do I deserve it? After the exhaustive stretch of hyper-vigilance and over the shoulder gazing, of expecting lurking danger at every turn, the realm of trust and serene neutrality can feel like a trick. Sleight of hand only,…
Unmapped
"When you're getting better, it's a jagged line." -Jenny Lewis Maybe it's just what happens in your mid twenties, but shit, I highly doubt it - there was this black jumprope I had tangled up with the wires of an old Nintendo 64 shoved deep into my closet, and for a year I imagined it…
love, enough
[fiction short] An hour before I am supposed to leave, I start crying. I've had that fluttery, controlling, rigidity-soaked fear for two days now, and underneath that there are always two forms of grief - the actual grief, which hurts, and the tender grief about being so hard on myself, that the New Age Buddhists call radical…
Squeaky Clean
I can remember the first time I felt truly clean, and I think I went off and wrote a poem about waterfalls and the color blue. Nerd. I was trying my best to express what it meant, that feeling of a freshly scrubbed inner space. Like linens washed in lavender water, or what I imagine a…
Zoloft in High School
somewhere in 2003, a girl I am seventeen years old, and I am depressed, and I think it's a cliche. I want so much to be good, but I cannot outrun, outdrink, outfuck this fear, and this fear is making me bad. I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Warning: May…
A Full Life 