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.
“Sit down,” I tell my toddler, calmly but firmly. “Don’t stand in the tub!”
She looks at me, her little legs searching for purchase, and she starts to rise.
She knows she’s not supposed to stand, but she wants that toy just out of reach.
“Sit,” I say again, giving her a look.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreSomeone 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.
Read MoreIt’s that same feeling. When you’re a few weeks newly pregnant and no one knows but you. The grocery store aisles are spent dreaming of new life with a baby while you scooch past the crowding carts whose temporary owners probably have their own secret story happening.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreWhen 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.
Read MoreWhen I was in the second grade, I was a carefree child with no real worries that I can recall. I spent my days in my head dreaming up stories, which I now know is characteristic of my personality as an INFP on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I was also an avid reader by this time, quickly consuming any book I could get my hands on.
Read MoreGoogling 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.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreWith the start of 2019, came Round two of the Me Too movement and the inevitable question: “Why didn’t she speak up sooner?”
But the truth is, she did speak up.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreI had it all. I had any pastor's dream job in the perfect city, but I rarely saw my kids or husband and that wasn't what I envisioned as I began the process of ordination to serve the church.
Read MoreI almost titled this letter “Dear Man-child” or “Dear Boy with the Napoleon Complex…” but, like most people, I realize it’s hard to convince people to listen to my point of view if I start out by insulting them.
Read MoreHe 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.
Read MoreI started meditating to try to get more focus and ease some of the edgy anxiety that’s always been native to my personality. I used HeadSpace, an app created by Andy Puddicome, to try to get a handle on it. I wasn’t a natural. I’d sit still. Breathe. But my brain jumped relentlessly from one set of thoughts to another.
Read MoreYou write the thing in a flurry in November. You write it in response to a journal’s call for submissions. The journal has feminism in the name. You consider yourself feminist in the “women are equal (and also kickass)” way, but you’ve never written a *feminist* essay before.
Read MoreAfter working out at the gym for six months and shedding twenty pounds, I walked down the aisle wearing a mermaid style, off the shoulder, lace dress.
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