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… Continue reading The Problem with Perfect
Author: Jen Miller
Best of the Falls Poetry Challenge for June 2019
I haven't blogged in quite a while, because I've been writing poetry and posting on Instagram instead. It's something of a guilty pleasure. Poetry was my first love as a writer, and you know what they say—you never get over your first love. Though I don't typically create from prompts, I was intrigued by the… Continue reading Best of the Falls Poetry Challenge for June 2019
When Healers Need Healing
I don’t always recognize when I’m feeling depleted. Emotional exhaustion has a way of creeping up slowly, day by day, getting closer and closer, until it takes over. Then I feel it—the emptiness inside, the well that has run completely dry. I crash. I have nothing left to give. It has taken absolutely everything I… Continue reading When Healers Need Healing
Becoming My Own Safe Harbor
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.
Speak Up When It Hurts: How a Stoic Learned to Share Her Pain
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.
Showing Up, Being Seen, and Commanding Respect: Lessons from Skunk
Animal totems are rarely what you expect. They’re usually a bit quirky, they show up randomly, and they may or may not be an animal you'd want to encounter.
The Other Trinity: Porn, Men, and Me
There are times when I’ve felt like porn was the third party in the relationship. Sometimes it served as the backdrop for what he and I were doing on the main stage. Other times, it was more like a mistress that he felt like he needed to conceal.
Divine Timing in the Four of Cups
The Four of Cups involves some trust and faith in timing—not our own, but the kind we leave up to the Universe.
Summer Solstice Tarot Spreads
Historically, I've used this time as a mid-year review, a little assessment of where I've been, where I'm heading, and what might need adjusting. I created a couple of Tarot spreads with that in mind.
Meeting Resistance
Tree limbs reach over the fence, swaying, beckoning, asking why I’m over here on the other side of a man-made barrier. Not woman-made. A woman would not make a defense against all that is natural and wild. She sees herself in the tangled vines and gnarled roots— meeting resistance, growing around it anyway. The trees… Continue reading Meeting Resistance