Category: Personal Essay

The Void

I’m doing something big tonight. Something I’m proud of myself for. Something that is wildly outside of my comfort zone. I’ve written a very raw piece about motherhood, and I’ll be reading that piece in front of approximately 650 people. But one important person won’t be there: my mother.

Leaving

“Goodbye, sweetheart,” he said, as he wrapped his warm arms around me and pulled me in for one of his signature Papa Bear hugs. He kissed the top of my head gently as he so often did since I’d become an adult; when I was younger he’d smatter wet kisses all across my cheeks and […]

The Moby Wrap

I was on my 11th day past due, and was scheduled for an induction bright and early the next morning. I was… petrified. Not of the giving birth part, although I certainly wasn’t feeling confident about that either, but for the parenthood part – the part after my doctor was going to hand me a […]

What Doesn’t Kill You

*Written in 2007 after I experienced a subarachnoid hemorrhage in my brain. What Doesn’t Kill You, Part 1 I’m too excited to sleep. I’m trying to lay in bed as long as I can, but it’s useless. It’s only 7:30 in the morning and I really should keep sleeping since I don’t feel that well, […]

Life in the Middle

Life in the sandwich generation is hard. At any given moment, I never know which loved ones need – deserve – more of my time, attention and worry.

Like an Onion

Like an onion, each of us has a center — the part that’s totally protected by all our outer layers — and this center is who we honestly are at our core; it represents our truest self, our vulnerability, the part we “protect” and shield from the rest of the world at all costs. Exposing […]

Back to the Center

I often tell my husband that I’m not like other people. In many aspects, I wish I was — I think it might make understanding my own self, my needs, my desires and what really makes me happy so much easier. But even for me, I’m a tough shell to crack. I’m a highly sensitive […]

Parents

Sometimes I look back on my childhood and wonder if it was all a dream. Other times I am convinced it was real… but am certain that it must have happened in another life. Nothing from those days is present in my current reality — at least not in the way it existed then.  On […]

An Opportunity for Growth

I’m of the belief that the Universe sends us experiences, in the form of hardships and particular life events, to teach us, and remind us of our immense human strength and resilience.  I don’t always (ever?) like these challenges, many of which have been painful and felt like they might actually break me instead of […]

Bubbling Beneath the Surface

Something occurred to me today that I’d never really considered before: I cannot remember a time — like, ever — that I didn’t feel anxious. Now I’m not talking about full-blown, panic-inducing anxiety here. I’m simply talking about that underlying nervous energy that bubbles just beneath my surface at absolutely all times. And has since […]