By Sara Marchant My husband recently retired. His anxiety had increased over the last four years (whose hasn’t, right?) and a few months ago he was having a bad day at work, when he abruptly stood up, announced, “I retire,” and walked out the door. It’s been an adjustment. At first, he didn’t know what [...]
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt 24 October 2020 Uncle Jack died this morning. The stroke, the collapse, the surprise mass on his brain? Whichever or all, at least he went faster than Aunt Peggy and Mother. Not as fast as Father—the gift of a heart attack. The comparison? I don’t know, perhaps it’s a futile attempt to lend [...]
By Patricia McTiernan A few weeks after a stay-at-home advisory was issued in Massachusetts, I turned 60. As someone with a chronic illness, I felt I had jumped head first into the high-risk pool. With a long-planned vacation cancelled, I reconciled to staying home a lot and tackling projects I had long put off. There [...]
By Nancy Dunlop It is my first day in— what are they calling it? Self-quarantine? Social distancing? Shelter-in-place? I suppose, for me, it’s isolation. But unlike many others my age, I’ve been in isolation for almost a decade, due to a disability. Today is really no different than any other day for me. Except that [...]
By David Martinez I was suspected of heresy the first day of the class I’d picked up at the Christian university, which I suppose is valid. This was after I introduced the course, the topics, and how we would focus on critical thinking as a way to progress and achieve in college, and explained we [...]
By Vicki Cohen I am a nurse-midwife. For over thirty years, I provided prenatal care for pregnant women and welcomed new life. It was mostly happy work, but sometimes I’d find myself worrying about the women who lived in poverty or suffered from substance abuse, the thirteen-year-old who didn’t know she was pregnant until too [...]
By Dorothy Rice In a 2005 essay, Nora Ephron wrote, “There's a reason why 40, 50, and 60 don't look the way they used to, and it's not because of feminism or better living through exercise. It's because of hair dye.” She went on to say, “In the 1950s, only 7 percent of American women dyed [...]
By Pam Munter Longtime Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” But for me, all politics is personal, especially when discussing the circumscribed role and demonization of women in society. The current spate of misogyny, with its soaring rise in the public forum, has uncapped an ineptly sealed lid on [...]
By Melissa Reeser Poulin A week before Trump’s inauguration, I began bleeding, miscarrying a baby just shy of ten weeks—my daughter’s little brother or sister. While women marched on Washington and in my city’s streets, I huddled in bed, losing this new life and the last of my false impressions of my country. I wanted to [...]
An essay by Jorge Antonio Millan, illustrated by Christopher Woods “With liberty and justice for all.” To some, the morning pledge of allegiance was a formality, routinely required. For me, it was something different altogether. As I remember it, I could sense the somber notion of being part of something bigger. The pledge harnessed in [...]
By Susan Swartz I took a day off from the news and made soup. No NPR. No New York Times. No local paper. No TV. A lot of curry. I took shelter from Syria and Parkland in my sunny kitchen. Had it not been for two teaspoons of neon orange turmeric I might have entirely [...]
By Kathy Lauderdale December 25, 2016 finds me in Richmond, Virginia, trying to put a festive face forward while feeling stark desolation and heartache. The election leaves me questioning the values of my neighbors. Everything I know to be true has shifted, resulting in an odd sense of being off balance. My sweet daughter-in-law, Katie, [...]
By Sara Marchant On Wednesday, during peer review, a student waves me over to say something in a voice so low and hoarse I strain to catch the words. “ICE went into Cardenas Market and took people away.” “What?” I say. I must have misunderstood. The students are reviewing papers with topics like Foucault’s panopticism, [...]
By Ryane Nicole Granados “Nobody would pass me the ball. Even kids who I thought were my friends wouldn’t pass me the ball.” These words from my nine-year-old, after another round of recess, Darwinism style, bounced around in my head like a bright orange basketball stealing my sleep at 2:00 a.m. and making me despise [...]
By Kristi Rabe My 11-year-old son tried to stab me with his fork. This was 5 seconds after calling me a stupid bitch. 15 seconds after I told him to go to time out. 33 seconds after I found he had played with a lighter and snuck candy from the cupboard. 1 minute after he [...]
