My friend almost lost both her parents but we don’t talk about it — CW: language, domestic abuse references In the fall of 1982, Jessie and I were thirteen, and ecstatic about 8th grade. We were essentially the seniors of junior high. It was the first year we’d both made the cheerleading squad, which we took as a sure sign that it would be…

I was a deejay at my mother’s deathbed — The silence is deafening. I cup my hands around my ears, “hear-no-evil” monkey style, to muffle the sound of nothing. The birdsong from outside the window fades, but the click-hiss of the oxygen concentrator remains. …

My Aunt Martha was never afraid to pivot — My Aunt Martha was gorgeous. She looked like Mary Tyler Moore and, I’d argue, was every bit as funny. In the 1970s, we all lived a breath away from each other, just outside a teensy town in central Illinois. My grandparents and Aunt Janet lived one cornfield away, and Martha…

How a former rock goddess unlocked the secrets of my adoptee past. My math, which is admittedly sub-par, put Barb at about sixty-eight. My mind painted her as grey-haired, apple-cheeked, and grandmotherly. I expected a whisper of a woman–a sort of folksong, maybe smooth jazz. I got nothing of the…

I refuse to scatter her ashes — An ocean beside us. An ocean between us. My biological mother and I left footprints in the same sand but were lost to each other. The riptide of the closed adoption system forever pulled us apart, even on our shared shore. Born in Chicago and relinquished at birth, I was…

If you never knew your name, would you ever know yourself? — I leafed through the mail as if it were any other day, unaware my world was about to collapse. I flipped past the thin, nondescript white envelope nestled between bills and circulars, stopped (I swear I heard a record scratch.), and thumbed back. It was addressed to me from the…

That time I moved practically next door to my biological mother & still never met her. For years, I looked upon Los Angeles as a bad boyfriend — an unfortunate entanglement I struggled to escape. From the late 90s through the early Aughts, (my late twenties to early thirties) we…

Living Life With No Backstory — (Note: This story was also published in Severance Magazine (severancemag.com) in April 2023.) “It’s one of the best profiles I’ve ever seen,” she says. Well swipe right I think, but it’s not that type of profile. I’m Zooming with my super-fancy genetic scientist doctor. I would think her a total…

A Note: In this piece, I make light of my own depression and experiences, BUT I am by no means discounting trauma, depresssion (including Seasonal Affective Disorder) medications, therapy, or EMDR ( Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing ) which can be helpful in processing trauma — including the pre-verbal trauma…