Until You Make Peace With Them — My lungs wake me with a gasp in the morning at least twice a year, and even before coronavirus, that was an unpleasant sensation. I was never told that no matter how much sleep feels like death, I am not dying. Is that why I am so surprised to wake…

I Should Know. I Grew Up With Them. — Amy sends me another video of her new obsession. The Instagram reel shows a gorgeous woman, heavily filtered, making tea, baking bread, pulling weeds from her garden, hugging her three kids, and kissing her husband when he got home. Amy loves these videos. Wants those domestic comforts more than anything…

Understanding This Oft-Misunderstood Advice As a Baby Writer — I get *a lot* of writing advice that I don’t follow. Good and bad. Call it ignorance. Call it bad manners. Call it whatever you want. I just don’t follow it. “Find your niche” was one of them. What can I say? I’m a decent storyteller but an excellent poet…

On Loving A Country That Does Not Love Me Back — There’s an essay in my drafts folder that’s eight years old. Currently, it’s about an 11-min read with one page of citations. It’s one of the pieces I return to, every few months or so, to jot down a few observations. Stray thoughts. When I started it, I told myself…

On closure and cassette tapes — In September 2012, I purchased a portable cassette player. From a dinky thrift store that smelled heavily of cigarette smoke and a sweet, middle-aged woman who questioned why this gangly teenager had cassette tapes in that day and age. The player had served its purpose, was outdated. Perhaps it did…

I want to dwell in a new land. A country that’s deeply flawed and owns its flaws. A land that acknowledges the wounds and doesn’t bury mass trauma in unmarked graves. I want a country that reveres those who remember and teach. I want a country that weeps with the…

On Social Media “Advice”, Self Help, and Lies — In the midst of corporations scrambling to paint themselves palatable during civil unrest, I was invited to speak on a panel. If you’ve been here for three seconds, you know I much prefer to write my two cents to the void and then eat three donuts like the ridiculous introvert…

Why You Don’t Like Yourself and Your Friends Leave You — “Your life is fine. You’ve got a home, a husband, a job.” A friend and I were talking over the phone while I made dinner barefoot during early 2020 quarantine. We’d been sharing about life, how we were holding up, and I shared about the rough patch I was in…

Especially If You’re a Young Christian. — “Besides, they don’t need to know that.” She stage-whispers this to me above their heads. I’m 19, doing my fourth round of student teaching. We’re standing in a resource room in a rural high-school with 12 students in groups of three. They’re doing various activities, and none seem to even…