The Body by Darcey Gohring
I thought about that wrongness I had believed was inside me. When I was little, it felt like a monster, trying to fight its way out. But now I knew there was ne...
Category: Escape
2 minute watch/Escape/Featured/Identity/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/Mothers and Daughters/PTSD/Society/trauma
Hypostasis by Amy Bailey
When Amy’s mother dies, there will be an autopsy. The report’s first paragraph will detail long black hairs protruding from her chin. It will be a commentary, a...
This Is Not Some Story About a Kid That Got Molested — Gary Smothers
with Featured artwork “Summer Shapes” by Norton Pease This, this is the memory that awoke in me one night while showering before bed. And let’s just...
Healing/COVID/7 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Featured/Family/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Justice/Literature/Loss/nonfiction/Race Matters/Society
How Can Black People Go Camping at a Time Like This? by Debra Stone
We bought the trailer after Trump became president, a safety net, in the probability of needing a means of escape. Maybe Canada then on to Cuba? At least it eas...
5 Minute Read/Aging/Escape/Featured/Faith/Family/Fathers/Food/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Loss/Love/Memoir/nonfiction/Religion/Storytelling
Pesach 5770 by Deborah Adelman
On this night, I have to beg permission from the hospital authorities to let you leave so you can join the Seder...I don’t look up to the heavens when I am on t...
Trigger warning/Make Me Cry/7 Minute Read/ACEs/Addiction/Adversity/Escape/Featured/Family/Fathers/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mental Illness/nonfiction/Relationships/Survival/trauma
Drowning by Natasha Williams
He was disheveled and smelled like cooked grease and cigarettes. It was an odor I associated with his being poor and hemmed in. There was so much about our life...
3 Minute Read/ACEs/Addiction/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Featured/Fathers/Grief/Loss/Memoir/nonfiction/trauma
Frankenstein’s Daughter by Sherry Shahan
Maybe I should tell her that Daddy drives with his knees while poking triangle holes in beer cans? Or that he once fell out his car door while rounding a corner...
Trigger warning/5 Minute Read/Addiction/Adversity/Anorexia/Being Body/Escape/Featured/Girls & Women/Identity/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/PTSD/Race Matters/Sexism/Society/trauma
One Token Is Always Enough by Jen Shin
My body has changed like my surroundings, too. Instead of the 15-year-old I was when I went to sleep, I am now the 18 year-old-version of myself that I will wor...
3 Minute Read/ACEs/Divorce/Escape/Fathers/Food/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Loss/Memoir/Mental Health/nonfiction/Sexism/trauma
Panama, 1994, The Jungle by Mishele Maron
As a girl coming-of-age in the late 1980’s, I was told I could go anywhere and be anything I wanted to be, but of course, no one could tell me how to do this, o...
10 Minute Read/20 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Family/Food/Identity/Immigrants/nonfiction
Triptych: African Portraits by Joanne Godley
Reconciling the discordance between your perception of how you wished to be accepted and the reality of how you were viewed and treated in West Africa was a pai...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Justice/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society/Storytelling/trauma
“Into the Racial Divide, A Story of Hope” by Jerry Waxler
In 2020, George Floyd's sadistic public murder ripped away the grand illusion of universal empathy at the core of the American Promise and vividly demonstrated ...
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. ...
15 Minute Read/Adversity/Escape/Featured/Incarceration/Inspirational/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Survival/trauma
From Mauthausen to Freedom: A Story of Resolve and Assimilation, chronicled by Louis Arthur Norton
This is how the Holocaust ended for me, a solitary Polish-Jew liberated by American soldiers from the infamous death camp Mauthausen. I was at the time an emaci...
Dancing with the Darkness of My Soul by Susan Moore
This is why people do it. This is why they cut.
Atmospheric River by Cyndy Cendagorta
I never thought of our river as hungry until it swallowed Schafer whole, until he breathed water instead of air. He and some friends doused themselves in Jim Be...
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...
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/Adversity/Art/Escape/Featured/Family/Fathers/Identity/Justice/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival
KGB search, Chop Train Station, The Promised Land By Ella Reznikova
My father and mother are trapped in this country, waiting for many years for permission to immigrate. Every six months he patiently goes alone to the Soviet Vis...
10 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Escape/Family/Identity/Loss/Love/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships
The Mermaid By Jean Sheppard
Only when the moon rises do I see it, see her—the glint of silver and then green and silver, the flash of scales. Only then do I know: my mother is a mermaid, a...