Category: Emotional Health

Dead Girl

Jacquie Prebich

I saw the familiar dead girl dancing in my basement spoon cut off the apron ties the dead girl said I’m jonesing to fuckin cook copped some works; from a friendly stranger’s hand the handle bent; the spoon a Jesus cradle the dead girl prayed tapping, arousing, blue hungry veins Read more

Jacquie Prebich

Jacquie Prebich was raised in New York City and currently resides in Los Angeles. She started ballet at age five and danced until her first pregnancy. Jacquie loves writing, producing, and directing. She created Ballet Theatre in 2006, a new performance concept combining classical ballet with acting, singing, and live music. Jacquie began writing poetry after undergoing rehab for prescription pain pills— an addiction that developed as a result of dance injuries. Jacquie lives in a scenic canyon with her family and rescue animals. She is currently working on her first poetry book. Follow Jacquie on Twitter @JwPrebich

I PASSED OUT

Billie T. Stark

Queen Violet? Dream flowing like blood from your wound? They put you away, huh Darling? You wear a hospital gown and stand on a rock. Natives surround you, raw sex in costumes strange to us. I want to stand beside you on the rock to take your place but I’m Read more

Billie T. Stark

Billie T. Stark is a queer poet and fiction writer living in the Deep South. Stark was born a male, sadly, but is reconciled to that assignment and hopes to achieve a full measure of humanity in spite of it. He has been, among other things, a teacher, reporter, manual laborer, office worker, performance artist and street musician.

Lessons

Melanie Jones

In the beginning, you will feel like you’ve landed in a world completely different to anything you have ever known or imagined, almost as though a tornado struck and whisked you off to another land. As you begin this journey you will feel like a modern-day princess. You will be Read more

Melanie Jones

Melanie Jones has embraced writing as a way to heals and as a way to help empower and inspire women of all ages. Hers is a journey that has been a blessing; full of heart ache and heart-warming experiences. She believes that all women need to listen their inner voice and to trust their instincts.

Recovery Looks a Lot Like Picking Up a Paintbrush

Samantha Rose

my skin isn’t paper but that doesn’t stop me from carving the weight of the world into my wrists crimson blood tiger stripes. or from ripping apart the pages of a story i never asked to be in don’t judge a book by its cover-up that is, pant legs and Read more

Samantha Rose

Samantha Rose resides in Portland, OR. She loves using poetry as a form of social commentary, and such writing is often inspired by her degree in sociology and philosophy. She enjoys art of all forms and her work has been featured or is forthcoming by Nightingale & Sparrow, Mohave He[art] Review, Down in the Dirt, Quail Bell, and more. You can often find her painting with coffee when she's not drinking it with her nose in a book.

Once Written

Victoria Addesso

There are times when I want to take facts and change them. I want to take the life around me, and in me, and turn it into a story. I want to rewind, and cut and splice. Leave some parts out altogether; reverse the chronology; take the raw material of Read more

Victoria Addesso

Vicki Addesso has worked in various fields over the years, full-time and part-time. In between family life and bill-paying endeavors, she works at writing. Co-author of the collaborative memoir Still Here Thinking of You~A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013), she has had work published in Gravel Magazine, Barren Magazine, The Writer, Sleet Magazine, Damselfly Press, Feminine Collective, and Tweetspeak Poetry. A personal essay is included in the anthology My Body My Words, edited by Loren Kleinman and Amye Archer. You can follow Vicki on Twitter @VickiAddesso.

I Was Told to Ignore the Abuse

Victoria Telfer-Smith

They told me to ignore the words you said, “Don’t let him get to you. Try a different way of being. Be different; let him know you want him. He is just frightened of commitment. He will calm down soon.” I started to see your entitled feelings; I think they are Read more

Victoria Telfer-Smith

I am a counsellor who uses hypnosis in treatment. I use therapy to work with clients to achieve the life they want to. I also work with traumatised and abused people who are finding it difficult after a trauma they have endured. I use hypnosis for childbirth and fertility issues as well as post natal depression. I feel therapy is life affirming, when humans feel pain, both emotional and physical, they may need to receive support and guidance to deal with it, that is how I work.

It’s All My Fault

Judith Staff

They say “the body remembers.” Somewhere in my mind, the intrusive sound of the soles of men’s sensible shoes slapping onto the shiny floors throughout the corridors still haunts me now and then. Sitting on a shelf labeled “incongruity,” the sudden thunder of racing footsteps filling the hushed, echoey hallways Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

EMBERS AND ASH

Jacqueline Cioffa

I wrote EMBERS AND ASH some years ago. I don’t remember the precise day; I only remember the unlucky circumstance. I needed to come home. I was unwell. Truth? I was out of my fucking mind, and the only person I wanted, needed and trusted was the one who birthed Read more

Jacqueline Cioffa

A retired, international model, and celebrity makeup artist. Co-Author of Model Citi Zen, the guide. Founder of http://modelcitizenmakeup.blogspot.com/. Author of numerous prose pieces in various literary magazines. Most recently published in Little Episodes Brainstorms the anthology, among esteemed artists Sadie Frost, Melvin Burgess and Todd Swift.