Retouching the Corpse
Retouching the Corpse

Part of me didn’t care what happened to the body. Mom had spent years abusing it, drinking and smoking, eventually producing the bloated, blackened cadaver before me. I had spent the past week alternately praying it into miraculous recovery and begging Mom to leave it because it was a completely useless thing now. On about the fourth day of her coma Dr. Carvahlo had suggest draining the infection and running tests on the pus. My argument was: who cares what the disease was, after it had shut down her kidneys, gangrened her legs and hands, and rendered her lungs useless? Two days later, Mom’s only working organ slowed to a stop - her heart.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumfeminism, Storytelling, self love, health, death Comment
Late Pregnancy
Late Pregnancy

Late pregnancy is all-consuming. Every movement declares my impending motherhood. This child is always in the back of my mind, when he's not in the front. Everyone is asking when the baby will come, as if I know. They say I'm "about to pop," but I feel confident I will make it at least to Spring Break. My first was a week late, and this pregnancy has been like a rerun of the first, similar in almost every detail.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumfeminism, Storytelling, pregnancy, self care, pain Comment
A Theological Shift
A Theological Shift

As of late, I feel that so much of the national discourse has fallen along divides that I know all too well. Politics pull out our deepest beliefs about the world and our religious values. I see a wide range of these. My facebook feed is chock full of staunch conservatives, Church going good people who vote right, liberals, and change-making, activist liberals (labels that I give out lovingly for the sake of this post — not to box anyone in to a complete identity). It ranges the spectrum. So when I have read many commentaries on the recent election and the country’s reaction to it, I notice how many highlight the inability for people to listen to one another and even conceptualize in any way where the other person may be.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumfeminism, Storytelling, theology, churchComment