

Sum of Casualties
I tried to understand his violence toward my mother—her purpled eyes, his paranoia and the neighborhood street lights he’d shot out with his issue rifle over the hood of his Chevy one bad night. His wandering moods ebbed with the flow of Falstaff’s swallowed. Having...

On This Day
I don't think I'll ever forget this day no matter how many years tick by. This date comes again every year but any other time, if you ask me the exact date I finally laid eyes on my father again, I can't always remember except that it was just after Thanksgiving. The...

Little Jenny Gump
My daddy might have been Elvis. I was pretty sure of it, at least between August of 1975 and the weeks following The King’s untimely death a year later. He might have been Elvis just as soon as he might have been Forrest Gump. After having been left by my mother for...

Gather Up and Swing Softly in Your Soul
Gather Up and Swing Softly in Your Soul Bring your girl-self, bring your woman-self and with her, Bring your joy Bring your sorrow, and your fiery soul Bring your heart, bring your mind Bring what is broken and Divine Bring your tenderness Bring your strength Bring...

Having Boundaries Doesn’t Mean You’re a B*tch
And whoever told you it's bitchy to have boundaries may need to surrender their backstage pass. Okay, so what if no one really never actually said that to you exactly, but you still feel like it's rude, unkind, mean, or it feels . . . Ooooooooo--just really...

Boundaries: Help for Healing Women
I remember the moment a doctor suggested to me that I had been suffering from C-PTSD. While his diagnostic manual hadn’t quite caught up with the notion of “complex” PTSD, he knew a great deal about it. When he read the list of causes and related symptoms to me, I...
