Tag: motherhood

Division without Separation

Darcy Lohmiller

My mom claims that when we were young, she would occasionally go into her bedroom with a book, lock the door behind her and leave my dad in charge of us on those days when, as she said, “I thought I would lose my mind.” I’d often heard my mom Read more

Darcy Lohmiller

Darcy Lohmiller is a middle school librarian in Bozeman, Montana. ​ Her essays about fishing, hunting, dogs, and trailers have appeared in The Drake, The Flyfish Journal, Shooting Sportsman Magazine, and The Big Sky Journal. You can read her essays at https://www.clippings.me/dlohmiller

Day 218: Cumulonimbus

Amye Archer

My daughter’s eyes are swollen and puffy-popped pink with 85% pollen and 15% heartbreak. The boy who has been calling her his for the last year, has decided that she is not his any longer. She is 10. I hug her against me, hold just enough restraint in my sympathy Read more

Amye Archer

Amye Archer holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her memoir, Fat Girl, Skinny, was named runner-up for the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award, and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has two poetry collections: BANGS and A Shotgun Life, both published by Big Table Publishing. Amye’s work has appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Hippocampus, Mothers Always Write, Nailed Magazine, PMS: Poem Memoir Story, PANK, and Provincetown Arts. She is the creator of The Fat Girl Blog.

Good Enough Mother

Kitt O'Malley

Advice to back off Advice to do more Be a good enough mother Not too good Don’t overdo it Don’t make him dependent on you He will never be able to care for himself He’ll end up in codependent relationships From other health care professionals Make sure he eats three Read more

Kitt O'Malley

If you check out Kitt O'Malley on LinkedIn, you'll see that she has worked as a legal assistant, psychotherapist, and commercial real estate professional before reinventing herself as a mental health advocate. As a mental health advocate, wife and mother, she neglects housework as she blogs at kittomalley.com about living with bipolar disorder, parenting an adolescent migraineur with social anxiety, and being caregiver of aging parents - one with alcohol-related dementia and the other with vascular dementia secondary to stroke. She's overwhelmed, to say the least.

Beyond the Finish Line

Tom Lagasse

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move. – Rumi Nicole Harkin didn’t believe in making New Year’s resolutions. Like most people, she would break them Read more

Tom Lagasse

Tom’s poetry has been published in Black Bough’s Poetry Freedom & Rapture and Dark Confessions; Faith, Hope, and Fiction; Silver Birch Press Prime Movers Series, Freshwater Literary Review, Word Mill Magazine, The Monterey Poetry Review, and Plum Tree Tavern, along with a half dozen anthologies among others. Several short stories appeared in The Feminine Collective. He lives in Bristol, CT.

Day 79: Birthdays

Amye Archer

I get older; you get older. That’s how this works. My legs are healing. Bright pockmarks of red and white mark where the surgeon’s knife entered. An “X” to kill the tributaries. That’s what he told me. A balding, gentle man in his late seventies with his hands on my Read more

Amye Archer

Amye Archer holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her memoir, Fat Girl, Skinny, was named runner-up for the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award, and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has two poetry collections: BANGS and A Shotgun Life, both published by Big Table Publishing. Amye’s work has appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Hippocampus, Mothers Always Write, Nailed Magazine, PMS: Poem Memoir Story, PANK, and Provincetown Arts. She is the creator of The Fat Girl Blog.

Unborn

Kate Murdoch

Maja’s hair was a black curtain. Like a child, she imagined it protected her as she sat on the train, her hand cupped over her stomach. For the first few months, she had spent most of her time prone on her bed, the pillow damp. She prayed to the Virgin, Read more

Kate Murdoch

Kate exhibited widely as a painter before turning her hand to writing. In between writing historical fiction, she enjoys writing short stories and flash fiction. Her stories have appeared in Eunoia Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Flash Fiction Press, Spelk Fiction, Sick Lit Magazine, Ink In Thirds magazine, Visible Ink, Firefly Magazine and Twisted Sister Lit Mag.

Don’t Want Your Good Ol’ Days

H.M. Jones

Testosterone tainted thrusts
of masculine need,
cumming sloppily all over
my social feed,

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.

Pitch Black

Renee DeMont

It was more like the crack of a shotgun, than an explosion. Breath caught in my throat. Flinching, I recoiled into a ball; my legs and torso bare; blankets lost sometime during the night, in a battle of siblings fighting for warmth. There was a storm raging outside our motel Read more

Renee DeMont

Renee DeMont is a SURVIVOR. She was born into poverty; spent much of her childhood homeless, living on the streets of Los Angeles, and in foster care. Renee learned early on: life is about adapting to adversity. The greatest gift she ever received? No one expected anything from her. By 18, she was ready to experience life on her own terms. First one in her family to attend college. After college, her focus and determination earned her a spot working at Paramount Studios, on the #1 show in television, "Cheers". At 29, Renee gave entrepreneurship a go and began a Biomedical engineering business out of her garage. Twenty years later, that risky venture grew into 8,000 square feet of success. She broke the cycle of poverty that plagued her family for generations. Recently, Renee turned fifty, filed for divorce (he declared WAR), and trudged through a debilitating nervous breakdown. Through therapy and writing, she reclaimed her sanity. Sold her half of the business to the ex, and now she has clarity and choices. Renee is personally and financially independent. With her new found freedom, she chooses to write in a sincere effort to reconcile her past with her present. Hopefully, through this cathartic process, the second half of her life will be led by her soul's desire, rather than by the fears and doubts of her first half. Currently, she lives in South Orange County with her teenage son and daughter, and her high maintenance yet lovable dog, Joe. Soon to be an empty nester, she plans to downsize the big house in the OC bubble, for a bigger life in the real world. Her days are spent gently launching her almost grown children into adulthood, and passionately penning her memoir. In the mean time, you can find her essays on pain, positivity, and empowerment at: onedropofgrace.blogspot.com