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
Landslide of Lessons
Landslide of Lessons

Someone posed the question "Name something important you learned from your dad" recently and I had to think about it some before I could come up with my answer. See, in my past, I would have answered out of a place of pain, snarky responses based on my limited perceptions at the time. I had reasons for these answers, sure. My parents split up when I was 6 weeks old and Mom - like too many single parents do - made the poor choice of sharing her feelings about my father with me.

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True Storiesjessica ochockilife lessons, storytellingComment
Upon Waking
Upon Waking

I am an abuse victim. My grandfather abused me over the course of five summers when I was working for him and my grandmother at their cafe. Waitressing at their steak house was a summer job and a way for me to earn money for school clothes—a way for me to escape the crush of seven siblings—and a way for me to be singled out for sexual abuse.

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True StoriesGuest Userabuse, survival, Strong womenComment
Going Home
Going Home

When we were expecting our first child, our friends with babies advised us that living around the corner from the grandparents benefits everyone. My instinct was that a little distance would be better for me and our fledgling family, a necessary step in our independence. We began to explore a move from our Manhattan one-bedroom rental, and I was determined to put a bridge—Throgs Neck or Whitestone, take your pick—between us and both sets of parents.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaummother, motherhood, home, family, parenting, parents Comment
Lists
Lists

Googling your mental health—depression, let’s say, anxiety—will inevitably bring you to neat lists of symptoms.

 The lists tend to have ten items or less. This seems ludicrous: no human condition, surely, meets the same criteria as a grocery store express lane.

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Julia Nusbaum Comment
Toxic Masculinity Silenced my Battle with Depression
Toxic Masculinity Silenced my Battle with Depression

A few years before her death in 1999, my grandmother was slowly ripped away from me. I always loved the time I spent with my grandmother but those days, I sat in idle anxiety until I was allowed to leave the nursing home hand-in-hand with my mom. I didn’t understand what precipitated the change. All I knew was that instead of love and softness, my grandmother began to look at me with a confused unfamiliarity.

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Julia NusbaumComment
Instructions Upon My Death
Instructions Upon My Death

I would hope you’re reading this with tears streaming down your face, but I doubt it. Our relationship has not always been an easy one, volatile at times, distant at others. But never let it be said I didn’t love you. Very much. I don’t know how you feel about me. We don’t talk about such things, apparently. But now I’m about to die and there are some things you should know.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumDeath, Grief, Familiy, forgiveness Comment
Storm Warnings: Beware the Taste of Rain
Storm Warnings: Beware the Taste of Rain

In 1970 one drop of rain hitting the ground every ten inches constituted a ten-inch rain in Tempe, Arizona, home of Arizona State University and me, my freshman year in college. Wetback referred to a co-ed who made out on the arid soil after the sprinklers ran in the morning, not migrant workers. People spit on soldiers coming back from Viet Nam. The Women’s Movement quaked on the cusp of exploding. And me? Well, before Titanic, before Leonardo Di Caprio declared himself King of the World, I stood atop the footbridge over University Boulevard and surveyed the student-lemmings who marched along the sidewalk.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumfeminism, #metoo, College Comment
Super Power
Super Power

I am proud to admit that I have a super power. I discovered it at an early age, and have found it even easier to call upon now that I am older and less important in my own mind and probably to the world in general.  

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Julia Nusbaum Comments
Out of Control
Out of Control

He was kicked out of our house when I was eleven. To her credit, my mother did this for my sake. He had petitioned her to have me put on the birth control pill—at that age! I had not even started my period yet. There could be no innocent explanation for that request; it was part of the set-up— abusers start their preparation years in advance of the actual crimes against children.

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Julia NusbaumComment