We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Once, it was quite important to me to talk about myself as a woman tossed about and striving for calmer seas or even better, dry land. I suppose we all identify…
Tag: stories
West Lands
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…
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 story and The Story
Long before I set out on a spiritual path of recovery, I felt some sort of kinship with some great beyond. Even as a child who had little interest in Sunday school and no discernible relationship with God in a religious sense, I prayed all the time. I prayed out loud before I went to bed…
The Through Line
"The stable solution is the individual who tells the truth." Like any relatively young person stumbling along and thirsting to learn, there is plenty that I don't know and understand. Because I tend to write so personally and from direct experience, much of what I state on here vacillates and changes. As I have grown up…
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…
Disarm
Dian Fossey, famous zoologist and anthropologist, who spent an extensive amount of time studying gorillas in their natural habitat, came to understand that the best way to approach the magnificent creatures was without weapons of any kind. It was a daring undertaking - gorillas are potentially dangerous; no doubt their strength and size could cause…
Cool Shoes
Sometimes all it takes is a pair of shoes to shift everything. In fifth grade, my supremely cool step-mom took me to see Clueless and then proceeded to whirlwind me around Westside Pavilion on a shopping spree to mimic the far out fashion of the film. We're talking plaid skirts and knee high socks, patent leather…
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 