ACEs Archives - Memoir Magazine

How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova

I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...

1 minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/Featured/Girls & Women/Justice/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Sexism/Society/trauma

Walking Home by Kate Zobel

I am twelve years old and, between fifth grade and seventh grade, I have gone from flat-chested to a Double D cup. Some girls envy me, and gossip, but they don’...

5 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Inspirational/nonfiction/Race Matters

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 ...

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 ...

7 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Inspirational/Loss/Mental Illness/nonfiction

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.

12 minute read/ACEs/Adversity/Being Body/Childhood/Family/Grief/Identity/Loss/nonfiction

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...