trauma 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...

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/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Justice/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society/Storytelling/trauma

“Into the Racial Divide, A Story of Hope” by Jerry Waxler

In 2020, George Floyd's sadistic public murder ripped away the grand illusion of universal empathy at the core of the American Promise and vividly demonstrated ...

1 minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/Featured/Girls & Women/Justice/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Sexism/Society/trauma

Walking Home by Kate Zobel

I am twelve years old and, between fifth grade and seventh grade, I have gone from flat-chested to a Double D cup. Some girls envy me, and gossip, but they don’...

10 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Family/Identity/Justice/Literature/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Mental Illness/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Religion/Society/trauma

Main Street Madness by Mary McBeth

But I don’t say that, instead I will say that I’m going to build a Tiny House, and ditch the double-wide. That way they will be awed instead by my quirky ingenu...

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...

7 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Doctors/Escape/Funny/Inspirational/Medicine/nonfiction/Parenting/Science/Society/trauma

Doctors and Torture: A Child’s View by Diane de Anda

As I watched this soft-spoken, self-effacing elderly man repeatedly humiliated by his wife, all the venomous rancor I had held for years completely dissipated. ...

5 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Family/#MeToo/nonfiction/Pedophile Priests/Rape Culture/Religion/#SAAM/Secrets/trauma

Playland by Jacqueline Regan

On the way home, he took me here, to this place under the Tappan Zee Bridge, on the shore of the Hudson, on the front lawn of an apartment complex where neither...

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 ...

15 Minute Read/Adversity/Escape/Featured/Incarceration/Inspirational/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Survival/trauma

From Mauthausen to Freedom: A Story of Resolve and Assimilation, chronicled by Louis Arthur Norton

This is how the Holocaust ended for me, a solitary Polish-Jew liberated by American soldiers from the infamous death camp Mauthausen. I was at the time an emaci...

7 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Fathers/#MeToo/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Society/trauma

Tremolo by D.M. Henning

I opened my mouth; my entire body becoming a scream that ripped open the night, a scream so heavy it was mercurial, filling every corner of the room with a blue...

12 minute read/Escape/Grief/Loss/Love/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/On Memory/trauma

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...

15 Minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/Childhood/Domestic Violence/Family/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/nonfiction/Relationships/trauma

Love Sick by Charlotte Wilkins

Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, an elemental life not “frittered away by detail.” He wrote about the essentials of life, “I do believe in simpli...

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...

#Recovery Runner Up/15 Minute Read/Adoption/Contests and Prizes/Domestic Violence/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/nonfiction/Recovery/trauma

Little One by Lisa Hayes-Minney

I rubbed the outside of my own hip, remembering what a kick from a steel-toed boot felt like when I was once curled up in a ball on the ground. I had old injuri...