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...
Category: Family
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,...
15 Minutes by Katherine Flitsch
* Artwork: “Mirror” by Ann Marie Sekeres “Are you staying here tonight?” Aunt Mary asks me as she takes my hand and pulls me into our pyramid of sol...
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/Divorce/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Inspirational/Love/Memoir/men/nonfiction/Relationships
But There Were Daffodils by Marian Rogers
In a second union, things you took for granted during those years with your first spouse float in your unconscious like twigs along a clear or muddied stream, o...
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/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...
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...
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...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Art/Being Body/Childhood/childhood sexual abuse/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Loss/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Secrets/Society/Survival
Evolving Body Language:Five Photographs by Toni La Ree Bennett
My left leg is stuck out as if I was on the verge of going somewhere. My mother will meet him for the first time three months from now.
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 ...
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...
The Understory by Buffy Barfoot
*Featured Artwork by Mali Fischer The word understory was gifted to me by a dear friend, as many good things are. Its meaning can be assumed, because all humans...
From Cambridge to Canada – An Extraordinary Love Story by Ellie Reynolds
He waited until after we had made love for the first time to reveal his age. He was thirty-six years older than me. I knew he was older, but this confession too...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/childhood sexual abuse/Family/Girls & Women/#MeToo/MeToo/Rape Culture/Secrets/trauma/2019 #MeToo Award Winner
2019 #MeToo Essay 3rd Prize Winner: A Tale of Two Sisters by Rebecca May Hope
Since childhood sexual abuse is a risk factor for schizophrenia, I’ll always wonder what role Doug played in her plunge into insanity. I didn’t realize that the...
3 Minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/childhood sexual abuse/Escape/Family/Identity/Man in The Mirror/#MeToo/MeToo/PTSD/Rape Culture/Secrets/Survival/trauma/2019 #MeToo Award Winner
2019 #MeToo Essay 2nd Prize Winner: A Face in the Mirror by Sue Gano
In his place is a little girl with ragged clothes and a dirty face. She has my blue eyes and a cowlick that sits above the peak of her forehead. It has been a l...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Being Body/childhood sexual abuse/Family/Food/Girls & Women/Inspirational/Loss/#MeToo/MeToo/PTSD/Rape Culture/Sexism/Survival/trauma/2019 #MeToo Award Winner
2019 #MeToo Essay 1st Prize Winner: The Fear is Real by Jules Carter
Fear is like a tattoo; it can never be washed away.
Love Through the Extraordinary: Marriage, Parenting, and Family in the Face of Rare Disease by Rebecca Thereault
Movements flickered on the screen in the dark of the ultrasound room like stars in the sky when we first heard her diagnosis. He tried to hold my hand as they s...