I spent about half of 2018 and most of 2019 becoming a licensed massage therapist. It turned out to be a transformative, turbulent, revealing, and healing journey that I’m still unraveling, though I don’t regret my choice to add that particular skill to my medicine bag. There is inestimable value in therapeutic touch, and I …
I’m nine years old, it’s late summer, and I’m playing tag and roughhousing with a group of boys in the churchyard. My mother is standing on the church steps with the other adults, talking and smoking cigarettes, stretching out the fabric of the evening until the stars are visible. Occasional shrieks of laughter punctuate the …
I have to instill in myself what my parents could not—I have to know that I’m safe, no matter who is in or out of my life.
I reasoned that in an unsafe world, expressing pain would expose a vulnerable weakness that others could exploit. It seemed wiser to keep it all to myself.
I remember the seething, white-hot rage I felt inside. I wanted to burn shit down or blow it up and leave a trail of ashes behind me. I had finally connected the dots between a father who was emotionally absent and impossible to please and the men I had attracted into my life. Guess what? …
It may surprise you to know that despite being a witchy, Goddess-powered kind of woman, I cohabitate with a man who is decidedly non woo-woo. It has come to my attention that there are quite a lot of us out there who maintain some type of spiritual practice that doesn’t involve our partner. It’s like …
Friends, it’s hotter than Brigid’s forge in lower Alabama, so I’ve been going sans bra as much as possible. It’s ridiculous to be layered when atmospheric conditions are at rain forest levels. If it would not result in arrest, I’d probably go around naked through the Dog Days of summer. Since public nudity isn’t an …
Cleaning out my purse is a weekly ritual for me, because I can’t stand digging through unnecessary items to reach the one thing I need (usually, it’s my car keys). Receipts tend to accumulate more than anything else. I buy something and shove the receipt down in my purse, as I’m grabbing the handles of …
I remember chatting with a friend at a coffee shop after a period of intense cosmic energy that had left us a bit flabbergasted. We were getting mighty tired of feeling like pinballs in the inscrutable game of life, and both of us were wondering when things were going to feel lighter, easier, or at …
Can you recall the exact moment when someone stripped you of your voice? How did that one incident affect your self-expression and creativity? What did you do to heal yourself?