Regret Archives - Memoir Magazine

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...

5 Minute Read/Bi-Polar/Depression/Grief/Loss/Mental Illness/nonfiction/personal essay/Regret/Suicide

End Of Message by Jen Waldron

If you had asked me before this tragedy what the chance was of her committing suicide, I would have said zero percent. Zero. Ask me now and I’ll tell you, if it...

7 Minute Read/Family/Fathers/Grief/Loss/Mental Health/nonfiction/Regret/Relationships/Suicide

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.

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...

5 Minute Read/Cancer/Family/Fathers/Grief/Loss/Love/Memoir/nonfiction/Regret

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.

3 Minute Read/Environmental/Inspirational/Institutions/Literature/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Regret/Society

Complicit by Author Michael Parker

I once tried to make a crude estimate of all the oil and gas I had a hand in coaxing from the ground. For sure more than 100 billion ft3 of natural gas, and may...

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.

2018 #Guns And People Runners Up/3 Minute Read/Contests and Prizes/Family/Grief/Guns/Loss/nonfiction/Regret/The #Guns and People Award Winners

Death and Grief by Patricia Woodell

I had been looking out of the window, just ten feet away. I had been at that spot since they began shooting and I knew I hadn’t moved, turned my head nor blinke...

2018 #Guns And People Runners Up/5 Minute Read/Guns/nonfiction/Regret/Survival/war/The #Guns and People Award Winners

My Long Term Gun Relationship by Daniel Dutilly

Time really does slow to milliseconds when you are about to die. “SHOOT BACK, SIR!” my driver yelled in panic from his seat behind the steering wheel.

15 Minute Read/Grief/Identity/Literature/Loss/Love/nonfiction/Regret

L Y D I A by Anne Hosansky

"She confided that she’d actually been divorced twice. “Now I’ve switched to women,” she added, as if it were another accomplishment. I was suddenly aware of th...

5 Minute Read/Family/Grief/Literature/Loss/Memoir/personal essay/Regret

48 Hours By Grace Jasmine

The ex-Catholic in me keeps repeating the words “mortal sin” and the day is filled with unimaginable annoyances. Considering myself an empath and being so compl...

5 Minute Read/Literature/Memoir/Regret/Secrets

Esau By Roger Barbee

Had I not helped to rob Esau, he would be approaching his forty-sixth year on earth now, and who knows what he would have been, what he would have accomplished,...