We don’t talk, for instance, about wine at dinner parties, or wine at house warmings, or boxed wine on the front stoop, or beers at the game, or mommy juice in sippy cups, about open bars or happy hours, champagne toasts or cakes drenched in rum, about all the gatherings—the celebrations—where we drink water, […]
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You’ll look back and you’ll think the scars seem almost invisible, like maybe they’ll be gone one day. But then you’ll realize you’re just looking at the smaller ones, and yes, the bigger one is still right there.
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I wanted to write about opioids because I didn’t have an opioid problem.
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I am sick with grief, triggered by my mother’s death, in turn triggered by Chardonnay.
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Then the road less traveled by diverged in a wood and took him in the night.
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We both can disappear in our own ways, can’t we?
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Finding joy in the now, even as death and difficulty mark the days, is possible, a choice, and a practice.
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This was a reconnaissance mission. My intention was to save her, not alienate her.
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“Was it vodka?” Mama said. Her voice had cracks in it. Why ask? She knew.
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James Brown and Patrick O’Neil discuss WRITING YOUR WAY TO RECOVERY.
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Television babysat our family—our thirteen-channel set, reception via a rooftop antenna.
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I grieve my father’s disembodiment. It is my grief inheritance.
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It hadn’t felt like teasing. It felt the way it always did these days—that I had disappointed her.
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Lilly Dancyger discusses her debut memoir, NEGATIVE SPACE.
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The toll I took on people I love can’t be measured. But I want to know.
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Addiction steals your integrity. Your freedom, too.
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For years, decades even, my father tried to escape meth’s hold.
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She introduced me to the ugly of religion and to the beauty of the world.
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I want to see myself as a whole person.
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I was fine. No one and nothing could hurt me.
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I always thought I was too smart to be one of those girls.
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There is no finality to this grief. Only a series of losses, compounded.
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Erica C. Barnett discusses her debut memoir, QUITTER.
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The thing we most had in common was that none of us wanted to be there.
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Anything we write now is a primary source.
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The marijuana shop shimmers from the abyss, a glowing green jewelry box atop the hill.
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I’m saying people can be imperfect and still be remembered as beautiful.
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I’ve known since I was a child that the world is ending. I felt it in my bones.
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I want to respond from my heart—not my anger, my judgment, my desire.
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Erin Khar discusses her debut memoir, STRUNG OUT.
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