Chopping off my own hair was my first act of gender expression and heteronormative resistance — I decided to make the “big chop” when my parents and I ran into a typical 14-year-old boy from my grade at the main store in town, a dollar store. As my parents pilfered through People magazine in the checkout lines searching for some celebrity to condemn, I stood back…

If you see these red flags, you can kiss the dream of an equal partnership goodbye — Author’s note: In this article, I want to make it clear that I am not shaming those who have higher support needs for a variety of reasons. …

Tell me you don’t understand trauma or mental health without telling me you don’t understand trauma or mental health — Content: Mental Health, Ableism Whenever I look at content related to having an ESA or even owning pets in general, there’s always that one comment about how “sad” it is that some people “prefer pets over people.” The adjectives to describe these souls range from “pathetic” to “insane” to “deranged.”…

Healing from complicated grief is not just mental or emotional, but also physical — A few weeks ago, I lost my beloved ESA, W. I’m choosing not to name her here because I don’t want to be too identifiable to folks who have known me in the past. But she was the kind of cat who transcended her name. In the days following her…

Parents of living, passed, and unrealized children have a great deal of common ground — Content Warning: Infant loss, parenthood, mental health, trauma I have a unique relationship with parenthood and childbirth. When I was younger, I experienced a traumatic, complicated pregnancy loss. It resulted in what some psychologists call “disenfranchised grief.” It’s the kind of grief that our society does not want to recognize…

You get to do what you love for a living, but at what cost? — Picture this: it’s a Monday afternoon and you have a deadline for a writing job in an hour. Life’s been hectic, so you haven’t exactly belabored over this piece. You’ve worked on it here and there throughout the week, but with the deadline looming over your head, it’s crunch time. This is a longer piece than you usually have — 1,700 words max. You get paid by the…

There’s a dark side to this popular coping practice — This article is for entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice. For medical advice, seek professional help from a provider. With mental health struggles increasing and pet-friendly housing plummetting, ESAs are becoming a popular mode of mental health treatment. While some folks think that Emotional Support Animals are just…

A poem — In the anti-human trafficking field, “faith-based residential programs” are popular modes for facilitating survivors’ recovery after exiting exploitation. Some of the most well-known organizations like this include Thistle Farms in Tennessee and Refuge for Women. These programs are usually funded by “social enterprises,” where they sell (often overpriced) goods to…

Just because you can make a living doing what you love doesn’t always mean you should — If you’ve ever voiced a desire to do something expressive for a living, you’ve probably had someone bark that you need to get a day job to support yourself. Otherwise, the logic goes, you’ll risk becoming a starving artist statistic. Ever since we got honest with the adults in our…