Tag: mother

Eleven

Jessica Rinker

Standing here in the doorway. I hold my daughter close. She is incandescent; I move to catch her, to absorb her before she is gone. Her body incipient, delicate places I’ve embraced and loathed the same. She is the sunrise, the before on the cusp of everything that is after Read more

Jessica Rinker

Jessica M. Rinker received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2014 and is a freelance writer and editor as well as a reading teacher for the Institute of Reading Development. Between teaching, reading, writing, and mothering her life is books and kids--all soul-fulfilling work. Jessica is represented by Linda Epstein of Emerald City Literary Agency, has had work published in Curious Parents Magazine and is a theater critic for patheatreguide.com. She lives with her partner, Joe McGee (also a children's author) and her sheltie, Marley, (who is not an author, but is an excellent fetcher), in Pennsylvania.

Suburban Rant

Shanna DeMott

Every day as a parent, I feel as if I’ve failed. It never gets easier, does it? Today when I dropped my daughter off at her new school, I felt her apprehension. It was a tangible, ‘reach out and cut it with a knife’ sort of hesitation. She hustled to Read more

Shanna DeMott

Shanna Sabet-DeMott is a freelance writer living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her husband George DeMott, sings Italian arias in the shower, and Pop-Opera around the world. She has an 11-year old daughter who has survived 3 brain surgeries, and who has shown her Mama the meaning of bravery at every turn. She is a lover of telling stories about food and life on her blogs, eatingoutvegas.com and stumblingbeauty.com.

My Grandmother’s Love: The Legacy of Alexandria Frahm

Louisa Frahm

It’s been a year, and yet it feels like just yesterday. A year ago this week, my grandmother, my idol, my mentor, my best friend, received her angel wings. She was 95. Through her life, she set the ultimate example of how to live with compassion, humor, and grace. Making Read more

Louisa Frahm

Louisa Frahm was born and raised in San Diego, California. After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a journalism degree in 2012, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of working in entertainment. Thus far, her career path has taken her from retail, to online marketing, to a specific niche of online marketing called SEO, which is now her specialty. Though her journey was a roundabout one, Louisa eventually found her way back to her one true love: entertainment. Currently, she is the SEO coordinator for E! Entertainment, specifically E! Online. When she isn’t performing website optimizations and tracking trending topics in her day job, Louisa is running her pop culture blog popoflouisa.com and expanding her writing portfolio. Louisa prides herself on her positive attitude and optimistic perspective on life. The perennial people pleaser, her life’s mission is to bring joy to others. Nicknamed “happy baby” at birth, she lives up to her reputation, always encouraging others to look at the glass half full.

Always Sorry

H.M. Jones

Screaming so loud my voice breaks, only the fragile hear me, and they’ll be the next to break. Mommy’s sick and sorry and so sick of being sorry that anything to numb the rage seems a proper penalty, a gift to give you peace. Smacking my face, alcohol craze, cigarettes Read more

H.M. Jones

H.M. Jones is a mother, writer, teacher and poet. She is the author of Monochrome, the B.R.A.G Medallion dark fantasy about postpartum depression and the beauty of memories. Monochrome will be released,by Feminine Collective Publishing, marking the books third incarnation. Along with a few self-published poetry books, H.M.'s poetry will be featured in three different anthologies in 2015 and 2016. When she's not mothering, teaching, or writing, she is weaving, kickboxing, pulling in the canoe or reading.

I’m on it Like Blue Bonnet

Allie Burke

Something my mother used to say. Or still does, I would imagine. As my youngest brother and I got older, we’d start to wonder out loud what all these little phrases our mother used to say actually meant. I remember us laughing in my car on a two AM highway Read more

Allie Burke

Allie Burke is a bestselling author, magazine editor, and mental health advocate. She lives in Los Angeles.

Phenomenal Beauty: Burned and Thriving

Yadira Carranza

I was 9-months-old when my life turned upside down. It was  a couple of days before Christmas when a fire started on the first floor of the apartment building my family and I lived in. My mother was pregnant again and worried for our safety. She decided to go thru Read more

Yadira Carranza

Yadira G Carranza was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. The middle daughter of a blended family, she was 9 months of age when she suffered major burns to her body. Despite this, she was able to thrive. She graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in El Sereno, California. She was in the Academic Decathlon from 1992-1994, Student Body Vice President in 1993 and Historian in 1994. In 1996, she had her first son Gabriel. In 2000, she relocated to Zacatecas, Mexico where she studied Business Management. In 2004, she married Marco Méndez. In 2006, she graduated from April Love Makeup Academy. In 2014, she became a Notary Public. In 2015, she became a GlossiGirl model.

The Bath

Bill Ratner

It was the middle of the afternoon. My mother’s voice was smoky and quiet, calming. I was five and a half years old.

“Billy, you and I are going to take a bath together, and I’m going to show you my breast. You know I had a mastectomy, and they removed my breast, but I’m better now, and I don’t want you to be afraid.”

Bill Ratner

Bill Ratner is one of Hollywood’s premier voiceover artists and a published author, narrating movie trailers for Marvel’s Ant-Man, Pixar’s Inside-Out, Ron Howard’s Rush, Will Ferrell's The Campaign, MegaMind, Talladega Nights, etc., commercials for Hyundai, Sprint, Pizza Hut, etc., documentary narrations for Discovery, History Channel, Smithsonian Channel, Disney World, and is the game voice of "Donnel Udina" on Mass Effect 1, 2 & 3, and the voice of "Flint" on G.I. Joe, Robot Chicken, Community, and Family Guy. His book from Familius Publications, Parenting for the Digital Age: The Truth behind Media's Effect on Children and What To Do About It, achieved #1 Hot New Release on Amazon.com. His personal essays and short fiction are published in The Baltimore Review, Blue Lake Review, The Amor Fati, Pleiades, Southern Anthology, Spork, NiteBlade.com, National Cheng Kung Literary, Papier Maché Press, TV Marquee, Coast Magazine, Wolfsinger Press Metastasis anthology, The Missouri Review audio essay, and he is contributing author of Secrets of Voiceover Success from Sentient Press. One of America’s leading storytellers, Bill’s spoken word performances can be heard on National Public Radio stations’ Good Food, The Business, and KCRW’s Strangers. He is a nine-time winner of The Moth StorySLAMs and a two-time winner of The Best of The Hollywood Fringe Festival Extension for solo performance. He has told stories at Comedy Central Stage Hollywood, Hasbro G.I. Joe Con, Long Beach Comic Com, National Storytelling Festival Slam, Portland Storytelling Festival, Timpanogos Storytelling Conference, Northlands Conference, LANES Share the Fire, National Storytelling Network Conference, and Los Angeles Unified School District classrooms since 1985. HUFFINGTON POST: “More than just the premiere voiceover talent in Hollywood, Ratner writes with the subtlety and texture worthy of a literary fiction master.” Bill teaches Voiceovers for Storytellers® for The Screen Actors Guild Foundation, SAG-AFTRA, and at storytelling festivals and conferences across the country. He holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from U.C. Riverside/Palm Desert, is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is a member of Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, Actors Equity Association, and the National Storytelling Network.

Too Close to Home

Uber Esquire

So how did a part-time lawyer and middle-aged mom who spent most mornings and afternoons shuttling my kids to their private schools and endless extracurricular activities end up as an Uber driver, transporting complete strangers all over LA? Well, no surprise, a pending divorce is part of the story but Read more

Uber Esquire

UberEsq is an attorney whose practiced with top-tier firms throughout her two decade career. But she gave up her regular "day job" and, through a series of unusual events, was talked into signing up to drive with uber. Before she knows it, she's discovering sides of LA she's never known, having wild adventures as well as misadventures, and using her skills and experience as both a lawyer and as a mother to help people in ways she'd never imagined. She's finds herself needing an uber driver fix almost every day. However, she's also determined to keep her uber gig on the down-low so that she can continue to build her new law practice and keep her kids on track without worrying them.