Will I always long to belong? The fight to leave the margins and live on the page continues. Present. Tense. — I’ve longed to belong my whole life because I was always different. Not different in a “special” way, but in a weird way. Being different was not celebrated when I was growing up in the 80’s. Being different meant being bullied. I was already what is recognized today as being…

My journey through abandonment to living with abandon opens with a stack of sympathy cards. In the days that followed my father’s death, my grandma presented to us a stack of cards she had assembled on her kitchen table, many addressed to my mom, c/o my grandparents. I remember asking…

Your reality may not be what you think it is. — This morning, it happened again: the bathmat was on the floor. I picked it up, folded it neatly, and placed it back on the tub, in the same place it always is, except after my husband showers. I head to the kitchen, where I am greeted by a cacophony of…

Coming out from under the influence of mental illness Because shame and mental illness are still inextricably linked, I don’t have a lot of experience with what recovery, or a reintroduction into society looks like for those who have sought help, worked through their issues, and have remorse over the…

Have you ever had this experience: you approach a group, crowded around a table. They’re deep in conversation, perhaps creating waves of uproarious laughter. You demure, observing there’s no room and you don’t want to interrupt; but it’s too late, someone notices, another person scoots over ever so slightly, and…

Americans are obsessed with thinness and youth, and many of us have had enough of it. As a society, we really are trying to change — our awareness and activism around body inclusiveness expanded greatly over the past decade, and the kind of fat-shaming and ableist schoolyard taunts that were…

I remember the first time I thought I might be fat. I was seven years old, playing tee ball. I always tried to be good at baseball, but I wasn’t, so I was put in right field. As the kids rarely would hit past the pitcher, right field was a…

Finding my voice and recovering my story, from down deep. I know I write well. What I don’t know is whether I am an artist. That’s what I’m trying to find out, through this project. The world is full of people who write, who identify as writers, who dream of…

A snowy adventure on the superhighway of slow — The trip to The Cabin in the winter especially is the most romantic thing. First, there is the packing: the careful selection of only the most comfiest of the coziest clothes, and the warmers, the fleecy fabrics for swaddling oneself, embraced for the bracing conditions brewing outside. There’s the gear…