To my friends, I tell the story as a joke. If Sarafina comes up in conversation, she — who bought me a beautiful pink tutu when I was nine and gave me beads and...
*Featured Artwork: “Rain” by Ann Marie Sekeres I had to go out that lunchtime. Some DVDs were due back at Blockbuster, we were nearly out of milk an...
I’ve been to thousands of death scenes. I knew what your family would say even before they found you. I know you’re the third suicide that this firefighter has ...
In the United States about six million people over 65 live with Alzheimer’s disease. You wonder how much your mother knew and if she suffered. Looking back, ...
Dr. Joy is the best therapist ever. She acknowledges my feelings around generational trauma and my fractured relationship with my Korean Tiger Mom.
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...
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...
In the black-and-white photo I hold, Dad delivers his salutatorian speech to a small crowd. Dated May 1959, the picture is unremarkable except for Dad’s skeleta...
I am lazy, fat, asinine, stupid. I still feel his red hot anger, the spit on my face, and the insults flying toward me. The feelings and labels remain, despite ...
It was only a matter of time before one of us was going to break down and scream, beat our fists against the van’s upholstery in disbelief and frustration.
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...
This is why people do it. This is why they cut.
* 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...
I started to think maybe I failed the test, the spilled milk test, that I had answered the analyst’s question wrong and that is why they secured me in a room fo...
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...
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...
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, ...
After hip surgery, my father’s memory is all over the map. As he recuperates in rehab, he tells us he’s been to Spain, England, Oakland and even Kabul, all in t...
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...
I think these people mean to say, that my mother with Alzheimer’s, behaves differently from the mother I knew without Alzheimer’s.
