True Confession: I’m a recovering expectations junkie. Give me a standard and I’ll try to meet it. Show me how to earn a gold star and I’ll go for it. This tendency has its perks. It pushes me to...
“We might have severe weather this afternoon,” Mark says at breakfast. We both look out our windows and the sky is clear blue. After we’ve cleared the dishes, I put on my running shoes and...
I’m sitting across the table from someone I love, but in this moment we do not agree with each other. My hands are curled into fists and my heart is pounding so hard I wonder if they can hear it....
The sun has long since slipped behind the horizon but I’m still at my computer. My back aches from sitting in the same chair. My mind feels like the inside of a beehive, full of restless buzzing....
I’m wearing four layers of clothing: bra, shirt, puffy vest and coat as if I’ve armored myself against what’s to come. On a chilly morning I step into a clinic for my yearly mammogram. As expected,...
The average woman is born with two million eggs, a staggering number when you consider each one has the potential to become a human being with freckles and eyelashes, elbows and knee caps. A...
I’m seated on a chair in the middle of the kitchen in my childhood home, a towel draped around my neck like a makeshift cape. My mom and grandmother read instructions from the back of a box. How...
Sometime in recent years it feels like the volume got turned up in our world. The Internet in particular can feel like an angsty teenager blaring angry music with no concern for anyone else in the...
Stressed. Depressed. Anxious. Frustrated. Broken. The labels stick to our hearts, covering our identities until we can’t see who we are anymore. We come to believe that our struggles and...
I’m sitting in a booth at a coffee shop with two friends, something that feels like a luxury since it hasn’t happened in so many months. We’re talking about what the future holds, where we’ll go...