A step toward turning fear into peace “Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass.” -Claire Weekes I’m having tension headaches again. Only now the pain that grips the crown of my head comes without warning. Like my anxiety, they’d become nearly non-existent. It was my racing mind that foreshadowed the throbbing of my temples. Stress is the…

A Sunday afternoon stream of consciousness I can’t stop crying, just like I can’t write. I don’t know what this is I’m doing now. I’ve written next to nothing for damn near a year. I’m eating the rest of the Milky Way Midnight candy bar I got from the 7-Eleven…

A poem inspired by a book — Eventually you get tired of playing the victim. In my situation, we were both. Both the predator, both the prey. And then there was my first love. But it was never him, it was the drugs, it was his childhood. It was her childhood. Couldn’t I love someone with a normal childhood? “She’s been working…

The One Where I Allow Myself to Feel — i felt heavy today — my heart, my soul. maybe it was the moon, or mercury. maybe it was that dream about my dad. whatever it was, it allowed my mind to slip into rumination. or maybe that was me who allowed it. but there it was. those words that…

A Yosemite Falls hike, and a pain that doesn’t go away — The pain in my chest was something I wish upon no one on this particular day. I forced myself on a hike anyway — or because of — hoping the strenuous climb would dismantle the heartbreak. Yet I felt it all along. Throughout my dehydration in the scorching heat, the…

The shirt said “Miracles do happen”. It just didn’t mean what I wanted it to mean. — It’s been one year since I got that mid-afternoon phone call. The one where I asked, “Mom, what are you saying?” when I knew exactly what she was. “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice shook and rose in pitch. “I’m scared.” Fear overwhelmed every cell in my body. My…

My experiences with mental illness, dissociation, and spiritual bypassing — In the late 17th century, three young girls — Elizabeth “Betty” Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam Jr. — began dabbling in fortune telling and experiencing “fits” — screaming, throwing objects, contorting their bodies, and claiming to feel biting and pinching sensations throughout. As a result, more than two hundred…

What a sunset can remind us about life — When you fly west in the evening, it feels like the sunset will last forever. The earth spins below you and the sun persists; stretching across the horizon, and across the construct of time. Your clock be damned, this is as close as you’ll get to freezing it. Recently, I…