Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
Well, this is absolutely going to ruin my love of all things lemon, I thought as I held a lemon swab in my mom’s mouth for her. This seemingly benign, care-taking piece of her cancer meds pack. Fresh, sweet lemon scented the air for a moment, but for once in my life, I didn’t savor […]
In October of 1988, a neighbor of mine lost her husband in a freak car accident. I first heard the news in a conversation with my son’s teacher. “Did you hear about that accident the Friday night before Halloween? The most bizarre thing—a deer hit the car and went right through the windshield. Two boys […]
I mean, yes, we are on a bed. Of course, we are on a bed because this is a fantasy and because beds mean rest, and intimacy and love. It’s a swirling white puddle—big billowy duvet and overstuffed pillows with the cases falling off in places where we’ve clutched the fabric too tightly. I’m spinning. […]
“She said, ‘cocktail of mental illness …” Emma relayed the information verbatim from the source. “She also said that ‘your engagement pictures looked like you were trying to hide an accidental pregnancy with the sweater choices.” She finished what hurl of insults she had overheard. I felt the full weight now lay upon me. “That is […]
1: The Heroine A funeral is lace, carnations, pinks, and old flesh. For Emma, dressing hurriedly for a grandmother’s send-off, it was going to be a showdown. Emma frowned as she did up pearl buttons on her white blouse. The yellow shirt had been too happy; the pink, too gentle. The trouble (and joy) of […]
A friend recently asked me how I was dealing with holiday depression. Until she asked, I hadn’t given it a thought. What a difference a year makes. On this day twelve months ago I wrote, “Can We Just Cancel Christmas This Year,” describing my Lemony Snicket series of unfortunate events that led to some serious […]
She finds her resolve upstairs, in a built-in cupboard in her bedroom, a cool black nook between eaves. She empties the house of herself, in a way – she can’t see anything, and in the wood, a sacredness and functionality must aid the process of unadulterated, unfleshed thought. Having strewn her uniform on her bedroom […]
The word recovery has always frightened me when it came to my own mental health. How do I recover from something that is with me for the rest of my life? When I was first made aware that I had a mental illness at 17 years old, I spent the entire next 365 days in […]
