I Earned My Stripes
I Earned My Stripes

I grew up listening to my mom criticize her stomach. Having children had done this, she would say as she ran her hand over her loose stomach. Being pregnant and giving birth had changed her body forever, leaving behind stretch marks and large breasts and a stomach that jiggled and bulged. She didn’t like how her stomach looked, but she didn’t starve herself or excessively exercise. In every fitting room we shared, she commented. If only I could get rid of this, she’d say as she patted her stomach. Look at this, she said, as she shook her head and looked at her side profile in the dressing room mirror. If I didn’t have all this, these would fit better, she would say, while pulling down the pair of pants that didn’t fit. She saw, and continues to see, her stomach as a negative, a defect.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumself love, family, body imageComment
Waterstones
Waterstones

A couple of months ago you were going to several Overeaters Anonymous meetings a week, sometimes every day. But when Elaine told you she couldn’t sponsor you anymore after your suicide attempt, and when she and a friend whom she also sponsored asked you not to attend a couple of their regular meetings, and after your therapist came to the facility you were hospitalized in to tell you she couldn’t work with you anymore, you stopped going to meetings altogether.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaummental health, self love, books, friendshipComment
Polar Solstice
Polar Solstice

The evening before you came into this world we endured the longest blackest night.

Winter. The hibernal solstice. Our slice of Earth turning her back to the sun, head bowed, submitting to the dark.

That night imprinted its suffocating length onto my birthing body. Within the week, wrapped in tendrils of dread

postnatally deeply depressed.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaummotherhood, family, reflectionComment
Tears for Vivian
Tears for Vivian

You stand with your husband on the balcony of a hotel room in Ao Nang, Thailand. Together, you watch the sky turn from pre-dawn pink to blue. It rained during the night and the air smells like damp teakwood and salt. Your hotel sits at the edge of town on top of a steep hill. As the sun rises, you contemplate the serenity of the Indian Ocean—a sea without waves.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumgrief, traveling, trauma Comments
Wedding Song
Wedding Song

It was time for our one rehearsal, the day of my daughter’s wedding. A group of family and friends who had been practicing alone now gathered, anticipating the thrill of voices blending and harmonizing, woven together by the glistening thread that is my daughter’s life force. In the run-up to this event, all said, “Yes, we will sing…We are honored to sing…We are thrilled to be part of this special surprise,” a touching tribute to a father long dead. All coming together from different places, different times, different experiences, to fuse in song.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumgrief, love, family Comments
(W)hole
(W)hole

I used to place Ken’s hand right on the mound of Barbie’s breast. It fit, almost precisely, as if the rounded palm was created for this small act of intimacy. Of course, further south it was merely a place where two legs connected, a smooth sweep of plastic that neither confirmed nor betrayed pleasure. But that didn’t stop me from imagining. I used to sit on the floor between the two twin beds in the upstairs bedroom at my grandmother’s house.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumsex, sexuality, bodies, body image Comment
The Cost of Leaving
The Cost of Leaving

I stare out at the sky. The man next to me is snoring, mouth wide open. His head drops forward, jolting back upright. It’s February. If the year had gone as planned, I would not have been on this airplane. I would have been finishing breakfast with my roommates and walking to class. Tonight, they will make dinner without me. We won’t dress up together this weekend, sifting through each other’s closets, to attend a party where we drink too much and laugh too hard. I am leaving home.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumReligion, father daughter, Change, Change of life, family, teacherComment
The Memorial
The Memorial

In the early morning hours after John Lennon was shot and killed, people began gathering in front of the Upper West Side apartment building that he shared with his wife and their young son. For more than a week, from everywhere and of all ages, they came to keep a vigil. Watching the local news channel, I hear them referred to as Beatle fans. But what I see are mourners. Crowded together, hemmed in by police barricades, they weep and hold candles and signs, cleaving to the spot where Lennon left this earth.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumChild Loss, miscarriage, still born, stillborn, New York, Beetles, John Lennon, Grief, Loss Comments
Seeking, Listening, Echoing
Seeking, Listening, Echoing

I grew up in the north of México in a city called Tecate, B.C. I used to think that I could, just as well, have grown anywhere else. I used to ignore, as I grew up, the situations of Mexican migrants. My family was not and that is why they always made sure that I didn’t know what, thanks to them, “I didn’t need to know.” My father and my uncles crossed the border as if getting into the neighbor’s yard to retrieve something they had lost. Only they hadn’t lost anything and were looking for what they never had, and without permission but with confidence. The confidence of someone who has crossed a territory that is not theirs many times knowing they shouldn’t.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfamily, immigration, relationships, languageComment
Illumination
Illumination

In the minutes after she was born, all of the lights came on. We watched her climb the wall of my body and land, exhausted, at the shore of my breast. Under the sharp white of hospital light, they did the weighing and measuring, and she screamed so that every number and value only reached my ears as alive, alive, more evidence of her realness, her presence. She sent howls up into a brightness that must have been like looking at the sun.

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True StoriesDiya MehtaStorytelling, Motherhood, mother daughter, life and death, dearComment
Eyes in the Dark
Eyes in the Dark

When I close my eyes to sleep, and all is quiet, and all I can hear is the sound of my breathing in the dark, I see him. Two black eyes glinting in the night. One smile, too white and too wide, unmistakable above me. I open my eyes in a panic, fear crushing my chest, paralysing my limbs and he is still there, looming above me in the shadows. I reach desperately for my phone. Light blinds me. I blink a few times as the image of a dog pops up on the screen.

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True StoriesDiya Mehtasexual assault, Storytelling, moving forwardComment
Valentine's Day Thoughts
Valentine's Day Thoughts

Sometimes I wonder why lovers hold hands when they walk around. I wonder how long they have been dating. Are they in that new stage, where it feels like they have to hold on tight, constantly let the other person know that they are there, that they aren’t going anywhere, that they want to touch them, that they want to be touched. Or is it the older couples, the ones who have been together for longer that hold hands. A gesture they don’t even realize they’re doing, their fingers just mindlessly reaching for each other, keeping their connection as they pace around the city.

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True StoriesDiya Mehtalove, self love, Self Discovery, heartbreak, valentineComment
Cold Water
Cold Water

After running around in the heat of a South Carolina sun all day, I didn’t think there was anything that could scare you. We wandered from pier to pier, picking up nearly every shell on the shores of Myrtle Beach and kicking over abandoned sand castles. After a long day of pink streamer bike rides and arcade bubble gum, it was time to rinse off the day and rinse the sand out of our Kool-Aid dyed hair.

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True StoriesKristina Buschgirlhood, sexism, sexual harassment, sexual assault, traumaComment
The Weight of Her Womb
The Weight of Her Womb

In a conference room cluttered with cold Chinese take-out, I sat with Jane as she wolfed down shrimp and noodles, finally eating lunch at three PM. Jane was a small woman with ocean blue eyes, golden dot freckles, and a pixie cut. She listened patiently as another OB/GYN resident in the room talked about a recent study proposing C-sections as standard of care over natural birth.

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True StoriesKristina Buschmotherhood, pregnancy, doctor, womanhoodComment
Change of Heart
Change of Heart

The first memory I have of our camping friends is of the day our daughters started kindergarten. We weren’t camping friends at this point, just parents of two children apiece. Their daughter—crying quietly at her desk. Mine—bright-eyed in her blue/green/white plaid skirt, matching headband, white polo.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaummotherhood Comment