First and Last Easter by S. Severin
First Easter It was our first Easter together. I was in a good mood, springtime in Chicago can do that to a person. The Easter displays were up and I decided t...
Category: Love
7 Minute Read/Childhood/Featured/Funny/Gender Non-conforming/Girls & Women/Identity/Inspirational/LGBTQ/Literature/Love/nonfiction/Sexism/Society
Hearts Are Public By Lola Kelly
“People can have crushes just on boys or just on girls???… Why? How does it work? What’s wrong with-” “There is NOTHING wrong with them! Don’t say that!” ...
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...
5 Minute Read/Divorce/Featured/Faith/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Memoir/men/Mental Illness/Relationships/Religion/trauma
A Trip to Trust by Catherine Vance
The altar is a yellow pine table, an unadorned platform for the laying out of grief and slivers of hope. It befits the geography of these mountains. It’s mess...
12 minute read/Being Body/Identity/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Man in The Mirror/Memory/nonfiction/Spirituality/war
Finding Me at Gettysburg by Rich Strack
*Featured Artwork by Mark Hurtubise I never met anyone I thought was crazy. Until the day I met myself. I was lying on the couch nodding off into an afternoon n...
Dementia/10 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Family/Identity/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Memory/nonfiction/Relationships/war
The Museum of Past Grievances by Jax Peters Lowell
The Museum of Past Grievances by Jax Peters Lowell Featured Image: “In de maneschijn” by Martine Mooijenkind My beloved won’t answer the phone. He’s...
3 Minute Read/Aliens/Food/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memoir/Memory/nonfiction/On Writing/On Memory/Storytelling/writing
Sourdough, Ancestors, and Other Recipes for Time Travel by Edvige Giunta
Memoir is about absence, emptiness; it’s about crossing divides–of time, space, language, and that ultimate divide between the living and the dead. It’s standin...
Glimpses of My Father’s Hands by Brent L. Kendrick
Sister knew my father longer—and better. Living closer to my father than I, she had spent more time with him. Being more blessed than I, Sister had more than e...
Hats and Newspapers by Kathryn Curto
My father called me names, made me cry, and one time even threw my plate of Easter frittata at the wall because he said I was being fresh. But he was the best n...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Craft Essays/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Literature/Love/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Memory/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/On Writing/On Memory/Parenting/personal essay/Race Matters/Regret/Relationships/Sexism/Society/Survival/trauma
How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova
I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...
Dementia/7 Minute Read/Aging/Bi-Polar/Cancer/Depression/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Identity/Literature/Loss/Love/Medicine/Memory/Mental Illness/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/personal essay/Relationships/trauma
The Hope of Better Hearing Aids by Rosann Tung
I try to cool the heat in my cheeks that her sarcastic “wise, rich daughter” comment brings on. Her walker embarrasses me, too – unsightly, attention-seeking, d...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Being Body/Featured/Girls & Women/Health/Inspirational/Love/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/personal essay/Sexism/Society
The Shock of Self Love by Sylvie Beauvais
I traveled between France and the United States every summer, and in France I was beautiful, and in America I was ugly and people told me so. Beauty as a cultur...
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...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Being Body/Featured/Family/Fathers/Funny/Gender Non-conforming/Identity/Inspirational/LGBTQ/Love/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Parenting
Morning Boy by Stephen Palgon
Before my wife and I got married, my mother told me that my father had expressed concern about my future brother in law’s gayness being passed along to our chil...
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...
Adversity/Featured/Health/Inspirational/Justice/LGBTQ/Love/men/nonfiction/personal essay/Relationships/Society
In Sickness and in Health by Scott Bane
Right in the middle of some everyday activity, I’m overtaken by a sense of joy, peace, or contentment. The window often closes up just as quickly as it has ope...
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...
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 ...