Tag: friends

Would a Broken Arm Cast a Pall on My High School Reunion?

Mary Novaria

If you had told me I’d be going to my high school reunion with a cast on my arm, I wouldn’t have believed it. After all, I was still in recovery mode and doing physical therapy following hip surgery a couple of months before. I could almost picture going to Read more

Mary Novaria

Mary Novaria's is a two-time Writer's Digest award winner whose work has been featured in Oprah Daily, Washington Post, Spirituality & Health, Cosmopolitan, Feminine Collective, FF2 Media, HuffPost, and elsewhere. She and her husband are empty nesters who live in the mountains of Colorado with their rescue dog, Rooney. She is currently working on a novel.

Judy.

Emelie Samuelson

I named my uterus Judy a few years ago. It made sense at the time. Calling it “Judy” gave me the freedom to air my bodily grievances while surrounded by strangers. Those closest to me knew who Judy was, and the general public, who tend to be grossed out by Read more

Emelie Samuelson

Emelie Samuelson is a girl in her twenties who is just trying her best. She spends her days reading, writing, and talking about books, playing games, and snuggling with dogs. She is the creator of the humor blog, Awkwardly Alive and Pleasantly Peculiar. Her work has also appeared on HelloGiggles, Catalyst Wedding Co., and in the anthology, This One Has No Name by The No Name Writing Group.

Women With Wings

Jude Walsh

During my routine OB appointment, my doctor mentioned that my nipple “looked a little funny.” I had noticed that too. She was fairly certain it was eczema but wondered aloud if I might be willing to have a dermatologist check it. As I had a mole on my neck I Read more

Jude Walsh

Jude Walsh is now more than five years post cancer. She still listens to Libana and still sees smiling children when she hears What a Wonderful World. Retired from education, she focuses on writing now and is grateful for all the new women friends this has brought into her life. Jude writes memoir, personal essays, fiction, and poetry. Her work has been published in Mothers Always Write, Flights Literary Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, The Manifest-Station, The Story Circle Network Quarterly Journal, The AWW Collection, and numerous anthologies including The Magic of Memoir (2016).

I Have Three Children

Kimberly Brown

The question I dread the most as a grieving mother is; “How many children do you have?” It’s not that I don’t know how to answer, it is all the questions that follow. I’m immediately forced to decide whether or not I want to reveal more intimate information than the Read more

Kimberly Brown

Kimberly Brown is the founder and editor of Minerva Rising Press. Her novel, Cora’s Kitchen was short listed in the 2015 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. Her work has appeared in Mused BellaOnline Literary Review, Compass Literary Magazine, Pitkin Review, Chicago Tribune, Today's Chicago Woman, National View, and Naperville Sun. Kimberly has MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and a Master of Science in Written Communication from National Louis University. She also maintains a blog at The Confidential Writer.

Periods

Maddie Swenson

Back in college, I lived on campus in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment. The white paint had dried dripping in places, so the walls looked like they were eternally crying. I had three roommates, one of whom pronounced the word “blatant” horribly wrong, like “debutante,” as if she had a bad Read more

Maddie Swenson

Maddie is a full-time college student with dreams of becoming a librarian. She likes books more than people sometimes, demonstrating a nearly sacrilegious affinity for books written by Shirley Jackson and Sylvia Plath. Her writing appears in secret diary entries and in letters to friends and on her personal website: https://msweny.wixsite.com/write

Isn’t That What Friends Are For?

Dave Pasquel

Decades ago, when I was in elementary school, I did have a few genuine friends. However, the so-called cool kids swiftly kicked us to the bottom of the totem pole and successfully labeled us as faggots to the entire school. When I moved to Florida in 1979, my world did improve. However, because of my grade-school trauma, it wasn’t easy to make real friends. In High School, I was acquainted with dozens of kids from every social group, but I didn’t have the phone number of one friend to rely upon if my car broke down.

Home is Where The Heart Lives

Jacqueline Cioffa

Home is where the heart lives and breezes through you.

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.

Not Pompeii

Ann Klotz

On our way to school last week, Atticus, 12, and I discuss our black cat’s willingness to lie in the driveway, unafraid or oblivious to traffic. “Like a cat in Pompeii, Mom,” Atticus observes, “Just caught.” “In lava,” I add, “and left there for thousands of years.” “Have you been Read more

Ann Klotz

I am a writer and mother, living in Shaker Heights, OH, where I am the Head of Laurel School, a girls' school. Our house is full of books and tiny rescue dogs. My work has appeared in Literary Mama, Mothers Always Write, the Brevity Blog, Mutha, Mamlode, The Grief Diaries, Manifest Station and elsewhere. My essay about becoming a teacher was recently published in Creative Nonfiction's anthology What I Didn't Know. I blog semi-regularly for the Huffington Post.