Fossils by Catherine Jagoe
Does it start with what damaged him—a father who only survived starvation in a series of Japanese POW camps because he was a natural scientist, a botanist, who ...
Category: Childhood
7 Minute Read/Art/Being Body/Childhood/Family/Fathers/Funny/Girls & Women/Identity/Inspirational/Memory/nonfiction/Society
@clotheslinetimeline by Maud Kelly
Hell hath no fury like an 8 year old about to not get Western Barbie. Christmas was not our strong suit. Easter—that my parents could pull off. It all happens i...
My Alexander Head by Beverly Pimsleur
Like everyone in our family, I cut Uncle Ben a lot of slack. He’d returned from the Second World War a paraplegic. He would spend the rest of his life on the si...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest
And Away She Goes by Renee C. Winter
Gradually Mother’s cooking faded, along with her tan. No longer in the kitchen when I rushed home from school, she’d be lounging on the cushions of our faux vel...
7 Minute Read/Aging/Being Body/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/Mental Illness/nonfiction/PTSD/Spirituality/Survival/trauma
Savasana by Heather Gemmen Wilson
When I was slim, I communicated with my whole body in large, confident gestures; I enjoyed being front and center. But I’m no longer thin. To deal with difficul...
12 minute read/ACEs/Adoption/Adversity/Childhood/Family/Girls & Women/Inspirational/Literature/Memoir/nonfiction/trauma
Loving My Attachment Challenged Daughter by Bari Benjamin
Liliya had been abandoned at six months by her birth mom, left in a baby carriage in a train station in Moscow. The Russian police took her to an orphanage wher...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Family/Fathers/Grief/Literature/Loss/Mental Health/nonfiction/PTSD/trauma
Very Important People by Gina DeMillo Wagner
You want to tell him you wish you could have gone too. That your mother never picked up the pieces. That there was never enough after he left. Not enough love, ...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Family/Health/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/Regret/writing/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
How to Write a Healing Story by Author Cameron Shenassa
I have a student who is failing my class. He wants to be writer, but he comes to me and tells me that he can’t write because he is depressed. He is wearing paja...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/nonfiction/PTSD/Secrets/The Life/trauma
They Don’t Live in Dallas by Anna Mullins
Sometimes you lie so much you begin to believe what you say. Sometimes you don’t even have to say the lies out loud to believe them.
Lessons Learned by Diane Malk
“there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny and there’s no Santa Claus—remember, we’re Jewish!”
No Loss of Life by Jennifer Fliss
“Do you want me to shoot myself?” My father asked me, thick metal in his thick hand—loaded, I knew. It was always loaded. After one or two drinks, the gun was d...
Pen 2 Paper by Mary Street
*Featured Image: “MAGA (I Know Words, I Have The Best Words)” By Norton Pease 2017, Oil, enamel and glitter on canvas Pen 2 Paper By Mary Street Mis...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Contests and Prizes/Family/Guns/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Memoir/nonfiction/On Memory/PTSD/Survival/The 2018 Memoir Magazine #Guns Essay Award Winners/The #Guns and People Award Winners
And Nobody Died That Day by Norah Vawter
We are real people. We live in the aftermath of violence. We live with the consequences of too many guns and too few regulations. And the story doesn’t end the ...
Above the Canyon by Daniel Coshnear
Far down below were trees and shadows; just beneath our feet red ochre rocks and dust and stubborn patches of thistle, and a surprise, a handmade grave.
20 Minute Read/ACEs/Black Memoirs Matter/Childhood/Family/Girls & Women/Identity/Literature/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/On Memory/Religion/Survival
Stirred By Michele Gutierrez
My mother took the greatest care of her porcelain Virgin Mary. She was two feet tall, dressed in white from head to toe, and as my mother claimed, cried when no...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Childhood/Escape/Family/Literature/Memoir/On Memory/Survival/trauma
Night Scavengers By Samuel Autman
The house had other guests too. They were invisible in daylight...