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.
Dear Breasts,
It’s been almost two years since I saw you. My last memory of us is you hidden underneath a checkered teal hospital gown that flapped against my naked bottom. I couldn’t look at you. I pictured the doctors cutting you off and resting you on a silver platter next to the operating table. Two jello molds, each with a cherry on the top. The whole thing felt surreal.
Read MoreI was chopping carrots to make soup when I returned the hospital social worker’s call about my patient, Sharon. I had made calls like this many times before.
Read MoreI stretch out my legs on the sand. I can see her almost approach me. She is wearing a white beach jacket and a straw hat with a veil over it. In sunglasses and standing proud, her breasts sprout. No one would ever have suspected the loss of one or the other. She is smiling, and her mouth says, ‘I am happy in the land of palm trees, coconuts, and certainly, I don’t have to search for any monkeys because I was never one.’
Read MoreWhen I was a little girl between the ages of six and eleven, I loved Barbie dolls. In my child-mind, Barbies (not just Barbie, but the other dolls in the line like Ken, Skipper, and Midge), with their anatomically incorrect, smooth, hairless, nipple-less, sex-organ-less bodies, silky hair, and infinite array of matching outfits represented the untarnished, uncomplicated yet glamorous life I might build for myself.
Read MoreMarch 14, 2020
The days are getting longer, but winter still holds New England in its chilly grip. Looking out at the empty harbor, no boats bob merrily on moorings, and the still dark water reflects the last rays of the setting sun and scattered streetlights. John and I sit in a half-empty theater, with vacant seats clustering around small groups of two or three people.
Read MoreMy pelvic floor is broken. The PT slides her fingers inside me and presses on a spot at the back of my vagina. A jolt of pain shoots through the inside of my ass. Not exactly my ass, it’s too far forward, but like the outside of the inside of my ass. It’s a hot spark deep inside where the tissue is tender and aching beneath the rock-hard surface of nebulous vaginal-anal space.
Read MoreBesides my husband, I have lived with no other being longer than Mullen. When we lived in Austin, after I suffered a miscarriage, my husband saw a pitiful ginger tabby kitten at an adoption fair. If we had any reservations, they were nullified when the adoption volunteer gave us Mullen’s history; his was the saddest tale in the shelter. A few weeks old, he had been found in a plastic bag, riddled with fleas and mange, cast away on the side of Mo-Pac.
Read MoreThe salt-wetted air tangs your tongue and sprays your skin, but still the tide feels strangely distant. Under normal circumstances you would gaze at the steady horizon, trying to absorb the enormity of the ever-shifting ocean. Its depth, its strength, its unknowable currents and flavors.
Read MoreI once saw a monkey jerking it. It was at the zoo, of course, where several blue-faced baboons swung over plaster tree trunks and romped across a funny little walkway modeled after a hanging bridge. As much as schools want zoo visits to be positive, educational experiences that transform the lives of young people forever, what has stuck with me in a lifetime's worth of field trips is deflated polar bears, hobbled cheetahs, and a monkey ignoring all the other monkeys to beat his meat.
Read MoreThe first playlist I made for someone came in the form of a mix CD that I’d burned on an old Dell desktop computer. It was a summer mix, meant to be played in my best friend’s pink Sony portable CD player as we skateboarded and biked down the backroads of our small Florida town.
Read MoreI see you,
with your dimpled smile,
your tubby legs,
your first stumbling steps,
a complete trust in the universe
that nothing will harm you,
even as your harried mother
calculates all potential risks.
Read More“A plane just crashed into the Twin Towers,” Sister Mary Frances said. Her eyes were wide, and she was breathing hard. She had just returned from dropping Sister Mary Michael at the Newark airport. “It’s terrorism,” she added.
Read MoreI grabbed orange-colored poster board from the art section at Walgreens, then joined my wife in the check-out line. I made sure to stay six feet apart from the person in front of us, even though I'm double-masked. I felt the customer behind standing too close and turned around to see she was not wearing a mask.
Read MoreI had never been to a funeral. I never went to a wake, never stood by an open grave as a priest read scripture. All I knew of the ritual of mourning was what I had seen in movies. Sometimes I idly entertained the notion of someone I knew dying, just to imagine what the funeral would be like. How would I act?
Read MoreMy mother passed away when I was eight years old, and for some time after that, I journaled to cope with difficult feelings. She wrote in beautiful notebooks while she was sick. I suppose I was trying to find a connection. I shared thoughts and feelings about a variety of topics: what pony I was going to ride that week in my horseback riding lessons, stories about my dolls’ lives, and random emotions.
Read MoreFor years, I used my hair as a diversion.
It began with my ponytail phase. Every picture in my mom’s photo albums show me with my hair pulled back into a ponytail. The photos didn’t capture the back of my head and the way I carefully color-coordinated my ponytail holder with the day’s outfit.
Read MoreThe first thing I remember about that day was my coffee. I sipped it nervously on the way to our eight o'clock appointment, the Anatomy Scan. I'd just recovered from my first miscarriage and was miraculously pregnant again. I was painfully nervous. My co-workers talked about the anatomy scan like it was the pinnacle of pregnancy appointments. In addition to finding out the gender of the baby, I was on pins and needles about whether all would be right anatomically.
Read MoreWhen we were young, my cousin and I seized any opportunity we had to toss a ball around. It was the nineties, before our obsession with internet games or online chat rooms. He was full of energy, never able to sit still.
Read MoreA sweetheart story is what I crave. The sweep-off-the-feet type that rides my heart into the
sunset with the faint letters rolling in the background. As innocent as prince charming, in
desperate search of their damsel in distress.
Read MoreThe preheated oven warms the living room. The eighteen-year-old tape deck plays the Mughal-e-Azam soundtrack in the background. Caramel bubbles over the stovetop as I scramble through the pantry to find pecans for the pecan buns. This is a typical Saturday morning in my household.
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