Permission by Diane Gillespie
She was frequently absent from my class, sat in the back with another African American student, and never participated. I wrote notes on her papers to come to ...
Category: 5 Minute Read
True Crime by Hilarie Pozesky
Melissa was killed six years ago. A couple of years after, I learned a TV show was to feature her story. I felt compelled to watch it. The show opened with the ...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Family/#MeToo/nonfiction/Pedophile Priests/Rape Culture/Religion/#SAAM/Secrets/trauma
Playland by Jacqueline Regan
On the way home, he took me here, to this place under the Tappan Zee Bridge, on the shore of the Hudson, on the front lawn of an apartment complex where neither...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Featured/Faith/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/Parenting/Relationships/trauma
Haunting Words by Emma Rose
I am lazy, fat, asinine, stupid. I still feel his red hot anger, the spit on my face, and the insults flying toward me. The feelings and labels remain, despite ...
5 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Being Body/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Loss/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction
Telephone Booth by Molly Bashaw
Working with the bees, I am not just looking at the same insects my mother once looked at, I am also becoming her. I am lying down in her body and standing up. ...
5 Minute Read/Bi-Polar/Depression/Grief/Loss/Mental Illness/nonfiction/personal essay/Regret/Suicide
End Of Message by Jen Waldron
If you had asked me before this tragedy what the chance was of her committing suicide, I would have said zero percent. Zero. Ask me now and I’ll tell you, if it...
Mammalian Diving Response by Olivia Swasey
I step out of the water. I have not drowned. I am new, just born today. The scars that mark my body and my heart have not been rinsed away, but I feel so new an...
The Shocking Truth About Jews in Sports by Jim Sollisch
I grew up in the Jewish version of The Wonder Years, an alternative universe where just about every person I interacted with was a Jew.
15 Minutes by Katherine Flitsch
* Artwork: “Mirror” by Ann Marie Sekeres “Are you staying here tonight?” Aunt Mary asks me as she takes my hand and pulls me into our pyramid of sol...
5 Minute Read/Addiction/Childhood/Family/Fathers/Grief/Loss/Love/nonfiction/Parenting/personal essay/Regret/Relationships/war
King’s X and Cabbadoni by Marguerite Welch
Life with Dad was an endless game. We shot candles out of Mother's silver candelabra on the picnic table. I learned to drive racing the jeep around hay bales in...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Art/Being Body/Childhood/childhood sexual abuse/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Loss/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Secrets/Society/Survival
Evolving Body Language:Five Photographs by Toni La Ree Bennett
My left leg is stuck out as if I was on the verge of going somewhere. My mother will meet him for the first time three months from now.
5 Minute Read/Being Body/Funny/Girls & Women/Inspirational/Man in The Mirror/men/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Sexism/Society
Hugging Gloria Steinem by Robert Bason
When the seventies arrived, I began to learn about feminism. Men could be intimidating. We were intimidating with our physical size, our attitude. I began to pi...