A Lunchtime by Kate Dowling
*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...
Category: Mental Health
Trigger warning/3 Minute Read/Featured/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mental Health/Mental Illness/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Pushcart Prize Nominations/Science/Society/Suicide
Dead Weight by Claire O’Brien
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 ...
Your Greatest Fear by Sherri Wright
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, ...
Asian American Pacific Islander/Adversity/Childhood/Featured/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Immigrants/Inspirational/Mental Health/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Parenting/Relationships/trauma
My Korean Therapist by Joan Sung
Dr. Joy is the best therapist ever. She acknowledges my feelings around generational trauma and my fractured relationship with my Korean Tiger Mom.
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...
3 Minute Read/Anorexia/Featured/Family/Health/Identity/Literature/Mental Health/Mental Illness/nonfiction/trauma
Harrowing by Natalie Coufal
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...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Featured/Faith/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/Parenting/Relationships/trauma
Haunting Words by Emma Rose
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 ...
Forgive Me by Lisa Mae DeMasi
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.
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...
Dancing with the Darkness of My Soul by Susan Moore
This is why people do it. This is why they cut.
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...
The Question of Spilled Milk: A Short Parable by Tracy Ross
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...
7 Minute Read/Aging/Being Body/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Inspirational/Literature/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...
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, ...
20 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Featured/Family/Funny/Grief/Health/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay
Debris by Cindy Bradley
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...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Family/Health/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/Regret/writing/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
How to Write a Healing Story by Author Cameron Shenassa
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...
10 Minute Read/Aging/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Identity/Literature/Love/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction
It’s Not Much of a World Without Unicorns by Jillian McKelvey
I think these people mean to say, that my mother with Alzheimer’s, behaves differently from the mother I knew without Alzheimer’s.
3 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Health/Institutions/Literature/Loss/Memoir/MeToo/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/PTSD/Recovery/trauma
Day 4: Mental Health Unit, Providence Hospital, Anchorage by K. Beth
She says she’s got Borderline Personality Disorder. That’s like the worst thing you can have, worse than Bipolar. I feel better being around her because suddenl...