Essays + Narratives

“You know how there are some things you can tell your military spouse friends before you tell your in-real-life friends?”  My eyes scan the text as it flashes on the kitchen counter. Wiping off my peanut butter and jelly fingers on the kitchen towel, I pick up my phone and slide my thumb across the […]

“Oh, one moment, I have to take this. It’s my sister,” Emily explained.  She stepped away and paced back and forth while she raised the phone to her ear. As she conversed with the undetectable voice on the other end, a smile spread across her face. I thought briefly about what I would do if […]

A life-giving iMessage thread breathes an abundance of  care, healing,  friendship into truly hollow shells  formed by  layers of unresolved trauma. Daily resignations of  nature, poetry, quitting, beginning, boundaries.  Affirmations of  goodness,  pleasure,  skin on bodies.  Revealing  secrets, dreams,  art, and tattoos.  Hearts woven, rooted,  with an abundance of origins  like the kudzu surrounding  the […]

In 2004, I signed up for the Susan G. Komen Three Day, a 60 mile Walk for Breast Cancer, promoted as “the greatest distance you can go in the fight against breast cancer.” Participants raise $2500, and then, over a period of three days, walk approximately 20 miles a day. We camped at night in […]

This poem is a collaboration with my fellow teachers. We all share a passion for educating young people, and we also care deeply for our students. I asked teachers to send me something they were not told by their formal education professors about teaching. Their responses are in quotations.  What they don’t tell you before […]

“I bet there are some skeletons in that closet!”  Jenny is standing in my kitchen, and I laugh as I say this to her. I don’t get to see my sister often because I live in South Korea, where my husband is stationed, and she lives in Northern California. But right now, we’re together in […]