HerStry publishes one Personal Essay every Wednesday. Weekly Personal Essays are a way for writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. Nothing is off limits. For essay submissions check out our guidelines.
My friend Marianne died last week. We met through a writers' group that started through the local public library and continued on Zoom during the pandemic. In the beginning, the group was fluid, writers, coming and going, sometimes for weeks, sometimes longer, usually without explanation. But in time, the regulars emerged, with a few of the original members as the bedrock. Marianne was one of those.
Read MoreAt the age of thirteen, I attended a boarding school a continent away from my family, an experience that triggered a wrenching homesickness. As a teenager, I navigated international airports and transitioned between cultures with fluidity, yet a floodgate of tears would open at the echo of my parents’ voices over a long-distance call. They were a seven-hour flight away, too far to dash home for a weekend of hugs and home-cooked meals, distant enough for the cookies in care packages to grow stale before arrival.
Read MoreSuddenly desperate to push beyond yourself, you commit to give back in some way in-between all the blood donations. A catalyst to thrust you from your daily grind.
Read MoreIt’s day thirteen of my Coronavirus quarantine, I got up at eleven, drank two mug fulls of espresso, and I’m sitting in my childhood room in Montecchio, Italy, writing in a little black notebook, blank except for a handful of pages. The notes are a few years old and they are all about him—they are embarrassingly titled “My You”—but most importantly they are about her, the girl who was me, the girl who didn’t think she would survive heartbreak, humiliation and abandonment.
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