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.
No matter how many stories I heard, my grandmother remained abstract to me. I needed something tangible to make my grandmother feel real to me.
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?