Please Survive by Catharine Lucas
For years, I believed I could FIX my son, control, restrict, protect him, by sheer force of will. When that didn’t work, I’d throw up my hands in despair and tr...
Category: Grief
10 Minute Read/Being Body/Divorce/Domestic Violence/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Loss/Love/On Memory/Recovery/trauma
What To Wear To Bankruptcy Court By By Nan McKernon
How does one find self-worth standing before the evidence of broken dreams, unrealized potential, and past mistakes? This is what plagued me as I stared at the ...
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/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...
Wish You Were Here by Sam Watermeier
By morning, there were no pauses left to count. The winter chill crept into the room as Dad lay lifeless.
15 Minute Read/Cancer/Escape/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Grief/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/nonfiction/Relationships
Anyway – A Memoir Excerpt by Barbara Tyler
His quiet Southern lilt didn’t match what he was saying. There should have been magnolia petals falling out of his mouth or some exhaustive yarn about his mothe...
10 Minute Read/Craft Essays/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Memory/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Storytelling/writing
Burying the Cat by Teresa Sutton
Stories are my past. They bob along a lazy river waiting to be plucked up, cherished, and set back down to drift. But they are images, merely snapshots in free ...
All That Carry On…: Oktoberfest by Ellen O’Donnell
After August 31, the good mornings and goodnights disappeared. In the push/pull of bipolar, as he muddled through the anhedonia, ambivalence, and anxiety, his c...
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, ...