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.
The Kingdom Hall was my second home. Sometimes, when my parents’ screaming wouldn’t quiet, it was my first.
I’d run in. The smell of pine trees would greet me. Smiling faces surrounded me, kind hands reached out to me. I never wanted to leave.
Read MoreI’m sitting on the bench, this time with my pants on, at my midwife’s office.
I’m here because I’m certain I’m off and completely uncertain about what I need to fix it.
Or if I need to fix it.
Or if I can fix it.
Or if it’s even fixable.
I’m here for a postpartum depression evaluation.
I sit in a local playground—small and fenced in, exclusive. This playground lies at the center of a larger park. This larger park, preserved by money from concrete and development, exists in the middle of an expensive neighborhood. A neighborhood known for its magnificent nature, its trails and hills, creeks and reservoir, as well as its schools, rich with funding and investment.
Read MoreEveryone gets sick from time to time, it’s inevitable. From a minor cold to an infection that requires recovery in a hospital, the process in which the body repairs itself is all part of being human. Sometimes our skin tears, our bones break, and our organs don’t function properly. Some medical illnesses may take more time and energy to diagnose, like the kinds of illnesses that are usually portrayed in TV programs like Chicago Med, House, or Mystery Diagnosis. Finding a cure, regardless of how big or small the illness is, is what those who aren’t well and their loved ones wish for. In an ideal world everyone would get better, but this doesn’t always happen.
Read MoreIt’s 1967 and I’m in my childhood home in Central California. There is a knock on the door. My mother, Pearl, looks at me and I know she can see the terror in my eyes. The next seconds will be the hardest thing. Standing on the porch is Dr. Gilbert, the family physician, and he is there to tell my parents that their sixteen year old daughter is pregnant.
Read MoreBorn pre-Google (PG) and it is a mystery how I, not knowing I was (ASD) Autism
Spectrum Disorder, survived fairly happy, optimistic, and somewhat whole. All
those years, the feeling of being an alien enshrouded me, yet I wouldn't give up
trying to fit in. Didn't know anything about it but in the 1980s, when my son was
diagnosed and then I was, well, I just did what I always did: slipped into denial
mode.
My first grade teacher told us not to overuse the bathroom pass. He stressed: we’d be doing fun things in first grade, things with turtles and books, and if you were in the bathroom, you’d miss out on everything. I took both rules and books very seriously, so I never once left class to go to the bathroom. I developed chronic UTIs and leaked in my underwear.
Read MoreI load up my motorcycle on a foggy morning and wind my way through the Sierras and out of California. I cut across Nevada then ride along the Arizona-Utah border. After days passing throughsage bush valleys, sandy deserts, and arid foothills, I rode over the Continental Divide this morning, my fifth day on the road. I arrive at a diner in Saguache, Colorado, a small historic mining town in the San Luis Valley.
Read MoreWith divorced parents, I hit the jackpot: two Thanksgivings, two Christmases, two dinners on Saturdays, and at least two cans of spray cheese in my dad’s pantry. Not to mention the caramel drops my grandma had in a bowl on the counter, which I would gulp down in pairs every visitation. I even believed the abnormal amounts of food I consumed were okay. I believed that licking the butter out of the plastic prisms was “dieting”. It’s better for me than eating bread, right?
Read More“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.
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