Literary Reflections

I thought I had done a pretty good job—no, actually a great one—explaining what a stepparent was to my biological children. Their much older siblings, K & Q, are technically…

My flower quilts filled all four walls of the tiny art gallery as I slowly turned around, trying to take it all in. This was also me, these vibrant colors…

I. The nondisclosure agreement lay on the desk like a choke collar, its sterile pages taunting me. Freedom was so close. I traced my fingers along the worn oak grain, the…

How I discovered my own story through the lens of a historical figure

And later, when another rejection pings in my inbox, I use those same words and hugs on myself. Because I, too, am talented and smart and capable. And I, too, frequently can’t see that about myself.

Reading became a door into the shame I had started to feel as a mother, the sense that I didn’t know how to do anything right in this new territory, even while other new mothers seemed to fall into it naturally.

What would it take to write without locking the door, to write from a space unfixed, untethered to either the bond of cultural expectations or its rejection.

The chasm widening between us is one of my own making—gatekeeping that capital ‘R,’ Reader, just like I’d done to my smaller self.

It’s circle time. My four-year-old daughter holds up an imaginary book to show the pictures to me and the other students in her pretend school. Her arms move quickly back…

I can’t help but feel that in writing, one turns away from the child and toward the writing, away from the reality and toward the metaphor.

I am here as a pillar they don’t have to touch to know it is there.