When I was 15, I attended a writing workshop with a girl who had been sexually abused by a family member, trauma that she explored in her poetry. She said she was offended when people told her: “I’m really sorry that happened to you.” She felt like they were saying they wanted to change her, so she’d reply: “Don’t be. It made me who I am today.”
Reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, and Salt Lake Tribune.
Many child abuse survivors grapple with how to translate our childhood experiences into our new families. What does it mean for us and our children that we come from the people who have often hurt us most?
As a descendant of slaveholders and Confederate soldiers, I want to tell the truth about the evil that my ancestors and the Confederacy perpetrated, the repercussions their crimes have today, and how I and other white people still benefit from discrimination against people of color.
On my first day of teaching flash fiction writing to high school students, I overheard some of my students wonder aloud: What is flash fiction?
Carl Romm was never completely well after he returned home from the Army.
When newborns go through opioid withdrawal at birth, they’re labeled “drug-addicted infants” and “oxytots.” Experts say these labels are both medically incorrect and stigmatizing for children.
An estimated 1.5 million US children lose one or both parents by the age of 15.
Melanoma cases have been rising in the US for the past 20 years.
Explaining to a child that you’re terminally ill is one of the hardest things a parent can do.
Many parents struggle with how to help their children manage anxiety.
I could tell you 100 stories and it wouldn’t cover what the people I’ve met have to say,” Sindy writes to me, shortly before 1 a.m. her time. She has spent the past year in Kurdistan, where she works with individuals who have escaped the horrors of ISIS.