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...
Category: On Memory
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 ...
10 Minute Read/Craft Essays/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Literature/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 ...
5 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Family/Institutions/Literature/Loss/nonfiction/On Memory/Refugees/Society/Survival
Memoir of a DREAMer by Magda X
When collateral damage becomes acceptable, the room dims. The brokenness of the world is no longer the problem of others.
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...
15 Minute Read/Family/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Memoir/nonfiction/On Memory/Recovery/Regret/trauma/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
Losing My Words by Author Evelyn Krieger
If recovery means you are no longer sick, or even that you are simply functioning again, then perhaps I have recovered.
12 minute read/Addiction/Funny/Inspirational/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Recovery/Society/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
Being the Lie by R.J. Roberts
Everyone in rehab has a very serious neck injury. It’s the hardest injury for doctors to accurately diagnose, even with modern MRIs and cat scans, the neck is ...
Fifty Miles by Sheryl St. Germain
If I were a religious person, I would say something blessed me that day. But I’m not a religious person. Perhaps some part of me believed, as I still do, in the...
Going to Find by David Hensley
I was in the kind of love that puts a rock in your heart and stuffs your eyes with cotton, but you hold that rock and that cotton. Because that’s all you’ve got...
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 KB Imle
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...
1 minute Read/ACEs/Featured/Girls & Women/Haibun/Literature/Loss/Memory/nonfiction/On Memory/Secrets
Back to Jackfork Quarry by Stacy Pendergrast
This is the place I remember—with its pine branches, hung like lace canopies. There is the rock slab where they took turns, each first pounding his chest, then ...