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.
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.
Read MoreThe sisters were hungry. They’d already eaten the things from the food bank that nobody liked. The weird canned potatoes, the sauerkraut, the can of beets. They’d thrown out the expired items and fed the can of dog food to the dog. The sisters had nibbled on dog biscuits in the past and those weren’t so bad, but they drew the line at wet food.
Read MoreI stretch out my legs on the sand. I can see her almost approach me. She is wearing a white beach jacket and a straw hat with a veil over it. In sunglasses and standing proud, her breasts sprout. No one would ever have suspected the loss of one or the other. She is smiling, and her mouth says, ‘I am happy in the land of palm trees, coconuts, and certainly, I don’t have to search for any monkeys because I was never one.’
Read MoreElise is standing in front of her dresser mirror, a tangerine in one hand, a wad of Kleenex tissue in the other. Her dark-eyed reflection stares back at me beneath a fringe of stylish blond-brown bangs. In our fifth-grade class, Elise is a golden goose amid the rest of us awkward ducks, with her pert nose and movie star mole at the corner of her mouth.
Read MoreThe clock in the kitchen screams at me through the quiet. Tick.
I sort my emails because categories make sense. I re-arrange the salt, bananas, and paper towels because I propagate structure. I compose paragraphs in my head because I make the things I need. Tick.
Read MoreMy favorite book by bell hooks is in my friend Kjersten’s house, I think. We’d spent a Friday afternoon in my kitchen with fellow mom friends, our circle’s version of Happy Hour, discussing love, grief, loss, and healing, our children tossing a football around outside. I mentioned my love for hooks and her writing on such topics, and Kjersten expressed interest. I told her hooks’ words changed how I approached my most meaningful relationships, helped me understand past communication breakdowns. hooks pushed me to embrace honesty and openness, to recognize love as a verb: “To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it's a decision, it's a judgement, it's a promise.”
Read MoreWhile the steaming hot water pelts my tired skin, I think of the Mother Orca Tahlequah of the Southern Puget Sound Orca Tribe. For weeks she has carried the body of her dead baby on her back. I feel the twinge in my stomach, that awful twisted wrench of a feeling. I imagine myself crouched down in the water, resting on my knees, and crying it out. I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to have love bring you to your knees, but my body can no longer go there. I don’t curl up in the right way anymore. My angles are off. I have no knees to fall to. Like Tahlequah, I must carry the grief upon my back. I must show it to the world.
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 MoreI live in a place I like to call the inbetween. I imagine this island, small enough to walk across it in a day. There's a beautiful lake at the center with a small waterfall. It's never too hot or too cold. Sometimes someone is there with me, but mostly I'm alone. This is my island of inbetween.
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