You’re Not My Birth Mother, But Thanks
But then someone appeared: a woman. Forty-ish. Brown hair. Casual sweater and jeans. An apologetic grimace.
Themed Months
32 posts
A few times a year, The Rumpus spotlights a specific issue or theme that our editors are passionate about. Some of our past themes include Disability in Education, Adoptee Awareness, and Mental Health Awareness. These efforts are led by an editor who has a personal connection with the issue and is interested in bringing new voices into the conversation.
Call for Submissions: November ’23 Adoptee Awareness Month
We’re accepting essays by adoptees from 11/1 through 12/31. Curated by Lauren J. Sharkey, publication in November 2023.
Pecking Order
I didn’t feel guilty, not exactly, but I did feel a twang of remorse as we left her by herself.
Into the Body
These days, I walk down to the river running through the town I’ve made mine. The water’s on the rise.
Braced and Bedazzled
“This is solid, mostly titanium,” the surgeon says while I’m still groggy in recovery. “You can’t pull it apart if you tried.,” and, almost as an afterthought, “Don’t try.”
The Dislexic Poit
I always received glowing remarks on my alliteration or understanding of poetic devices, but they were hidden beneath what felt like hundreds of tiny red strikes across misspellings—although my phonetic versions of the words were sometimes genius, and always understandable.
The Microphone
The ableism of schools as workplaces means that all teachers are assumed to be able-bodied until a disabled teacher identifies their need for accommodations. Schools respond; they do not, to my knowledge, anticipate disabled teachers.
Outside(r)
I’d never thought of myself as separate from the world I lived in; the Outside I came from was sensory-rich and immersive, there my interactions unfolded organically and overlapped, building intuitively like the scales on a pinecone, rewarding curiosity with wonder.
So You Want to Feel Better: Navigating Grad School, Disability, and the Language of Pain
The term “invisible disability” is commonly used to describe disabilities that are not readily apparent to the eye, but I want to push back on this term. When you pay close attention, most disabilities become visible. Poems are not encoded messages that we’re meant to decipher, I frequently remind my students, they are language organized in ways that demand a different kind of attention. And so it is with invisible disabilities . . .
