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.
One cold winter morning I’m out in the field, surrounded by grassy-breathed sheep, checking tension on the barbed wire fence. My mobile buzzes in my pocket, frozen fingers fumbling and numb. “There’s this boy,” they announce. I check the calendar: nine months of paper-based gestation.
Read MoreThe internet has made and destroyed me in equal measure.
Picture this: I'm eleven years old, and we've just gotten our first family computer. I was some months into secondary school, having spent the first few months working from a local library whilst my mum read magazines in a corner. It was clear very early on, the things I'd explore on the internet. Yes, you've guessed it. My future.
Read MoreI can’t blame Sister Rose of Lima. She had no idea how ferocious I was at seventeen. Raised to slap, punch, pinch, and sit on top of my siblings when necessary, I had a working class right hook and the grin of a junkyard dog.
Read MoreThick. Big boned. Fluffy. Curvy. Let’s be real, you mean fat. Go ahead…you can say it…FAT! It’s the three letter F word that people only say in whispered tones behind my back. This is me, a fat girl, officially giving you permission to say it. Because guess what? Fat is an adjective, but it’s also a noun. It’s a thing I have a lot of, but it’s not the only thing that defines me.
Read MoreDuring our engagement, his adoptive mother asked me why I was committing to a broken man. But that came later. At seventeen, I had only just fallen in love with Donald and was miserable about leaving him behind for a three-week trip to Europe with my mother and sister. I consoled myself by buying postcards in each new town, and writing “I love you” in the local language: “Jeg elsker deg” from Oslo. “Jeg elsker dig” from Copenhagan. “Jeg älskar dig” from Stockholm.
Read MoreIt’s the same as it is every Wednesday. The writing prompt scrolled on the dry erase board in plain view:
Summer
Fifteen minutes to write what comes to mind – that’s the drill – and at the close the option to share, or be chosen if no one volunteers.
Someone always volunteers.
Read MoreGirl nervously follows Boy into the dimly lit bar, traveling in his wake to the leather stools. Red velvet drapes project an eerie, dark hue throughout the room. Faint jazz music plays from across the seating area; if it was any louder, it would be too difficult to hear Boy discussing his love of poetry and tattoos—the ink he gets in honor of family members.
Read MoreI lived in Pico Rivera when I was eight. I was among hundreds of Latinos that made up the majority of the population. We lived with my Mexican grandmother who grew weed in her garden for her arsenal of homemade medicines. Everything she had was homemade: her bras and underwear to her skirts, hand stitched with pockets added to them so she could carry her money and medicines around. Her brother lived in the shack besides ours, badly built by Mexicans with muddy pants and dirty work boots, placed in my grandmother’s back yard. We didn’t have a home of our own. I spent most of my childhood running around my grandmother’s garden and eating the dumpster dived food my great uncle would fish out of bins while my parents worked.
Read MoreLook at us, pretending to be normal, out to dinner on a weeknight, ordering the same beer like old friends. There was a food truck inside the restaurant and an exposed brick wall.
He took a bite from his dinner and washed it down with his beer.
Read MoreInsecurities are a bitch. It’s just one of those things that comes with life—something that each of us have for different reasons. For her, her arms were the one place on her body where she felt the most vulnerable. It was the one place on her body where she felt the most exposed, so she did her best to keep them hidden.
Read MoreThe 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 More
