Essays + Narratives

I cried when I found out I was pregnant with my third baby. Heart-sinking sobs on my bathroom floor. We were done having babies. Our life was finding roots and growing into all the things we’d dreamed about. We were finally feeling settled, just us and our two girls. I sold all of my baby […]

I am an Enneagram 3—a success-oriented, overachiever. Diabetes doesn’t fit the perfect mold I envision for my life.  Driven by the image of holding it together, diabetes has left me unhinged. For years, I didn’t allow myself to grieve the loss of a body that had failed me. Diabetes comes with the stereotypes of not […]

My oldest daughter, Ellie, clutched my hand. Her four-year-old eyes peaked over her mask, wide with anticipation. After a year of pandemic living, I finally agreed to bring her along on an errand and her excitement was palpable, just like my nerves. I took a deep breath, reiterating to myself that the nursery and plant […]

Alex is a reader, teacher, and writer balancing life with autoimmune diseases while carving out spaces for creativity. She lives in Paris, Tennessee, with her husband and two sons. Alex teaches 9th grade English and Creative Writing. She is an Enneagram 3 who loves to put aside her to-do lists to read in her comfy […]

We’ve been stuck at home for a week so far, at the beginning of a pandemic we anticipate will last for a few months. My three daughters are crafting a video game system out of our dying marker collection and a wrinkled pad of finger paint paper they scavenged from somewhere in the basement. They […]

I doubt that anyone who knew me in my early years as a mother would have considered me to be an anxious parent. In fact, I erred more often on the side of being too trusting. I was always the mom who picked up the pacifier off the dirty ground and popped it right back […]