Today, my friend asked me if the pain of heartbreak and grief ever gets easier. Can we really overcome the pain of the past? A valid question, my dear, for all of us. To “overcome” means to prevail. To win. A triumph in full. Perhaps I once believed that overcoming…

I worry. Unavoidably so. Tendrils of anxiety twist and bend and curl and spiral into tightly wound springs, catastrophe cocked and loaded. Worries as rough and ripped as hangnails snag on fabrics of thought. Voices warn to let go of the uncontrollable, to stop selling my proverbial birthright for the…

The junk drawer crashed to the floor, spilling its contents over square footage of my entire kitchen. Out of what I can only assume was spite and maliciously poor timing, the silver knob of the junk drawer had caught snugly in the pocket of the jacket tied around my waist…

The sound of vomiting interrupted Idina Menzel’s mezzo-soprano belting from the van stereo. I froze. Stuck in the confines of the driver’s seat, I whipped my head around to see my four-year-old losing her lunch inside our family Honda, which was parked in the rear of a Walmart parking lot…

Choose me, I thought. Me. Me. Me. Goosebumps prickle my arms as the cool fall breeze blows through the bleachers. …

When I was a little girl and slept on the top bunk in a crowded, wood-paneled bedroom, I’d dream of monsters. When the fireflies turned out their lights and fluorescent street lamps glowed warily, I’d squint into the nothingness of the witching hour and feel the thumping racing of my heart…

We sat upon the clouds, he and I. A future, we said. Bright and elegant, constructed from our fledgling dreams and unassuming hopes and dashes of whimsy. Hand in hand, we collected tiny concepts and bursts of intuition and kept them safe in our pockets. Gathered armfuls of memories and…

The room was small but not uncomfortable. I sat on a gray twill couch, flanked gently by summer throw pillows. Plucky pick-me-ups from the clearance section at TJ Maxx generously decorated tall walls of faux shiplap. “Kiera, what do you want your future to look like?” my therapist asked. I…

Humpty Dumpty once sat on a wall. That’s how the story begins, anyway. We sing, we clap, we teach phonemic rhyming patterns to preschoolers about tragedy befalling breakfast food. (beFALLING?? I’m brilliant.) Now, I’m by no means a literalist. But our friend H. Dumpty? First of all — not an…