Childhood Archives - Page 2 of 3

1 minute Read/Childhood/Flash/Funny/Girls & Women/Grief/nonfiction/Sexism/Society

Ripple Effect by Janis Butler Holm

As a little girl reading fairy tales, I came across the word “replied.” Though a bookish child, I somehow read “replied” as “rippled,” as in “Because I said so,...

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/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 ...

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An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.

15 Minute Read/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Justice/Man in The Mirror/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society

Turning Left: The Case for Social Democracy by N. S. G. Holm

Leaning Left, 2:1, millennials want America to be an “us” society. They call it socialism, but this is incorrect. They do not want state ownership and control o...

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...

5 Minute Read/Adversity/Childhood/Funny/Identity/Inspirational/nonfiction/personal essay/Society

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.

3 Minute Read/Childhood/Girls & Women/nonfiction

Monkey Island by Dorothy Rice

At ten, it sounded way worse than what I’d imagined. Tugging the chenille bedspread close beneath my chin, I wondered how her new friend talked Tiny into it. Th...

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,...

2 minute watch/Adversity/Being Body/Childhood/Flash/Funny/Girls & Women/nonfiction/Survival

Bombardment by Julie Benesh

I am over 50, feeling 70 and used to being semi-invisible in big, sexy Chicago and currently dressed for something as far from clubbing or prostitution as anyon...

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...

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...

10 Minute Read/Aging/Being Body/Childhood/Fathers/Girls & Women/Identity/Loss/nonfiction/personal essay/Relationships/Sexism/Society

Laguna Main by Clementine Moss

Jim Morrison lolls on the beach in my mind, and I let go of the day and follow him down to this other world. Do women get to be so free, lounging, writing, owni...

10 Minute Listen/Audible/Childhood/Family/Identity/Inspirational/nonfiction/Religion/Society

Brands and Promises by Author Fajer Alexander Khansa

This short experimental piece of approximately twenty four hundred words explores questions of belonging from the perspective of a Syrian boy who lives in diffe...

#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 ...