I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve moved in my adult life. Part of poverty is housing instability, and that means lots of moving. I’m honestly so exhausted from moving over and over, and I’m dreading moving during another birthday for the second year in a row. But the fact remains that we… Continue reading Why do we have to move again?
When I was a young child, the most important aspect of my education was memorizing selections from the Christian bible.
“Don’t be a victim.” “You have a victim mentality.” “I’m not a victim.” “I’m not like a typical victim.” These statements are often normalized and seen as signs of strength and resilience. We don’t want to give our abusers so much credit as to define ourselves by what they did to us. However, these phrases… Continue reading Rethinking Victimhood
For the past several weeks, I’ve been re-entering the world of Duolingo. Since I first used the app about a decade ago, it has received a full makeover and many additional courses. It now includes math and music challenges, and I’ve been enjoying those a great deal. When you start a new course, the app… Continue reading How Harmful is Educational Neglect?
I didn’t know how to connect. I only knew what I was taught, and I was taught badly. Like a parrot in a cage, I learned the language of my captors. My parents kept me trapped inside a small world, and I only knew how to speak the way they taught me to. Dad was… Continue reading Parrot Performance
Learning takes effort and the capacity to wrestle past frustration. What’s referred to as a “learning curve” is more tolerable for some people than for others. While some of this tolerance is innate, a large amount of it comes from experiences. My tolerance for the frustrating process of learning something new is very low. I… Continue reading Letter of Self-Compassion: Learning to learn
Content warning: this piece discusses child abuse and neglect. “Children, you are about to be told one more time that you are America’s most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen… Continue reading Children Do Not Belong to You
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” This phrase is commonly attributed to Hemingway, but may have been said by Red Smith in an interview about column writing. I haven’t read the works of either of these men, but for years I lived by this… Continue reading Letter of Self-Compassion: Writer’s Block
2015 was so full of transformations. I worked three different jobs, and my relationships were in a constant state of flux. It seemed like I was constantly losing friends while precariously trying to make new ones. At the beginning of the year I found myself sick of trying, as I had desperately all my life,… Continue reading Letters of Self-Compassion: Heaven
One of my earliest memories is of crying with my mom. When I was about five, it occurred to me that not everyone I loved was a Christian. My mom told me that they would be going to hell, and I was gutted. I started naming family members, asking “even them?” and as I cried,… Continue reading Letter of Self-Compassion: Hell
