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: ACEs
Adverse Childhood Experiences
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Aliens/Childhood/Featured/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Immigrants/Mental Illness/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction
How I Discovered America by Sharmila Voorakkara
My voice climbed an invisible staircase until at the top step of my skull it jumped up and down and waved its arms in the air. “Wake up, mom! Wake up!” I said. ...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Doctors/Escape/Funny/Inspirational/Medicine/nonfiction/Parenting/Science/Society/trauma
Doctors and Torture: A Child’s View by Diane de Anda
As I watched this soft-spoken, self-effacing elderly man repeatedly humiliated by his wife, all the venomous rancor I had held for years completely dissipated. ...
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 ...
The Cycle of Time One and Two by Desiree Woodland
In presentations for Breaking the Silence NM, a program to teach mental illness and suicide awareness to youth, I wanted to reach young people before suicide be...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Fathers/#MeToo/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Society/trauma
Tremolo by D.M. Henning
I opened my mouth; my entire body becoming a scream that ripped open the night, a scream so heavy it was mercurial, filling every corner of the room with a blue...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/Childhood/Domestic Violence/Family/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/nonfiction/Relationships/trauma
Love Sick by Charlotte Wilkins
Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, an elemental life not “frittered away by detail.” He wrote about the essentials of life, “I do believe in simpli...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Books/Black Memoirs Matter/Childhood/Contests and Prizes/Featured/Family/Funny/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/nonfiction/Race Matters/Society/Survival/The Memoir Prize for Books
Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.
Bereavement by Lauren Teller
A friend, or a date, or a stranger who spotted him lying in the street, a person brave enough to touch a seizing, unconscious man, would search Eric’s pants for...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Escape/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Love/men/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships/Society/Survival/trauma
I Am My Longing by Susan Ostrov Weisser
There were my mother’s stories, and there were my books. Books were imaginary but some books could be true; Betty’s stories were neither true nor not-true, they...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Aging/Childhood/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Loss/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships/Secrets/Sexism/Society/Survival
My Mother’s Back by Mary Zelinka
Her admission that her diagnosis was terrible news showed a vulnerability in her I had never before witnessed. I had believed that nothing ever weighed on her,...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Escape/Family/Fathers/Institutions/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival/war
Passages by Rebecca Jung
My mother pressed her cheek to Leslie’s cold face and cried. She rocked back and forth, holding my sister’s limp body close to hers. And those Congolese women r...
#Recovery Runner Up/12 minute read/ACEs/Addiction/Childhood/Faith/Fathers/Inspirational/nonfiction/Recovery/Survival
Father Figured by Laura Carey
This flex-time rehab had been recommended to me by the same doctor who’d prescribed 100 Vicodin every two weeks for fibromyalgia. After a couple of years under ...