Posts tagged women storytelling
The Barbie in the Middle
The Barbie in the Middle

Barbie. Everyone’s favorite (or favorite-to-loathe) doll-slash-role model-slash-best friend-slash-impossible ideal-slash-icon of cultural demise. Even though I’ve always harbored a fairly incurious attitude toward the Barbie-as-perfection phenomenon, I nevertheless loved playing with my inanimate, buxom, rubbery friends. I didn’t compare myself to them, and they didn’t dictate my self worth. They were just one population in an only child’s universe of dessert-scented dolls, bathtub mermaids, and little plastic people who lived in a furnished tree.

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True StoriesDiya Mehtawomen storytelling, aging, middle-age Comment
Routine Healing
Routine Healing

Putting myself back together was a boring, organized process. A 1,000-piece puzzle left on the coffee table for months, or in this case, years. Finally sitting down to frame myself in sky and earth. Painstakingly searching the jumble for all those matching hooks and crevices. After the chaos of him, simply paying the bills on time was a cathartic experience. Routine was my remedy. Work away the day Monday through Friday. Come home when it’s dark. Stop at Walgreens to purchase a bottle of wine and pizza rolls. Cigarettes if needed. Home to one-and-a-half glasses of wine and the allowance of one orgasmic cigarette. The order was important.

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True StoriesGuest Userabuse, domestic violence, Women, women storytelling Comments
The Stories My Purses Have Told
The Stories My Purses Have Told

I grab my keys and check my purse before heading out. It’s not a huge trip, but these days, it seems like a huge trip—a visit to the grocery store. For a little over a year now, this trip has required some extra preparation. The old usuals: cell phone—check...wallet—check...coupons—check. And the new usuals: mask—check...extra mask—check...hand sanitizer and wipes—check... gloves—check.

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True StoriesSelena Raygozawomen storytelling, women, story Comments
The Driver's Seat
The Driver's Seat

My first love was a 2003 Subaru Outback. We first met at the car dealership that’s notorious for ripping people off, where I was blinded by newly gained teenage independence. Excited by my accomplishment of saving up three summers worth of paychecks, I was easily seduced by the Subaru's dependable reputation. I was in awe at the fact that my dad wasn’t entirely disapproving.

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True StoriesSelena Raygozacar, women storytelling, womenComment
On Anxiety and Other Terrible Things
On Anxiety and Other Terrible Things

Once, I had lunch with a really great poet. He said to me that most people think of anxiety the wrong way. They think that it is a rain cloud of what if, what if, what if, a cage of doubt and indecision which holds its sufferers in constant purgatory. They think of anxiety as a door flung wide open, flooding the mind with cumbersome uncertainty. In reality, though, there is nothing uncertain about anxiety. In fact, it is the most extreme form of certainty that can exist in the brain. Anxiety doesn’t ask “What if terrible things happen?” but instead says, “Terrible things are going to happen. What are you going to do about it?”

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Guest Useranxiety, poetry, women storytelling, Strong women, women Comment
Chicken Bus
Chicken Bus

The first chicken bus honked at four AM.

The second one blasted its horn at 4:20 a.m., or maybe 4:30. It didn’t matter. I was awake well before dawn, like every day in San Andreas Osuna, Guatemala. I wondered why I didn’t hear the other 30 people sleeping at the Finca — surely one of the twenty three Guatemalan Army personnel and seven Engineers Without Borders staff heard the blast horns designed to wake all possible passengers in a twenty give mile radius. I weighed what to do in the darkness before breakfast at six and chose to shuffle off to the shared toilet ahead of any others. 

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True Storiesjessica ochockiStorytelling, women storytellingComment