he whispered. He let go of my hand and moved it to my stomach. “Are you okay?” I was 14 and watching a movie with friends, sitting next to him. I couldn’t figure out why he was asking me that. But yeah, I was fine, thanks for asking? The movie kept playing and his hand moved lower. “Are you okay?” He wasn’t clear enough and I didn’t understand...

this with a simple statement: the life that I live today was worth the torment of every grueling challenge and experience I have ever had to face. I grew up in a home where no one knew how to express love for one another. My father, an abusive alcoholic, was ever-absent. When he was present, which was seldom, he was vicious. Pair the previous with a...

why I’m nervous to write this. He should be the one embarrassed of how he made me feel. Why am I embarrassed about how I dealt with it? He knew the power he had over me. He chipped away at me. He put me down. Then he said he loved me, so I played along. I pretended to think it was normal because he loved me. After we broke up, I’d never felt so...

in a Christian church. On top of my education being intertwined with the bible and its teachings, I grew up in the humid cathedral that is the south. Even if you weren’t going to church you were somehow inherently Christian, and taught to say ‘bless your heart,’ by the young age of three. As a young woman of this tradition, I was taught to seek...