In the months after I had my first child, I was plagued by a variety of gruesome visions. I’d be walking down the stairs, holding my son in a blanket, and picture myself falling and smashing our heads into the wall at the bottom. I’d be driving to Target with him in the backseat and […]
Read more "Violence, Media, and Helicopter Parenting"It’s been a couple of months since my last post on PDXX — months (1? 2?) that have both flown by and dragged on like a train with wooden blocks stuck under its wheels. I had a double mastectomy on November 4, a preventative surgery I chose after finding out I have the BRCA mutation. The post below […]
Read more "Double Mastectomy Ins & Outs"My stepdad asked my mom if I’m depressed. Perhaps jokingly. He thought I’d been writing about a lot of hard stuff lately. I don’t feel depressed. But I have been feeling a bone-deep sensitivity. And it’s had me thinking about fairness. I’ve heard that the happiest people understand that life is not fair. That life isn’t […]
Read more "How to Live in an Unjust World"This is what I remember: My dad would rise early and take the train from the suburbs to the Loop in downtown Chicago. He’d work all day in a tall office building on Jackson Boulevard that I saw only once, on a special Saturday he brought me with him, a day I remember by the […]
Read more "The Greatest Lesson: Do What You Love"This post originally appeared in May on True STORIES. It chronicles the author’s book-tour-road-trip from Denver to Portland for The Rooms Are Filled. We drove north from Bend along Rte. 26.
Read more "Author Road Trip, Day 5 & 6: Bend to Portland"This post originally appeared in May on True STORIES. It chronicles the author’s book-tour-road-trip from Denver to Portland for The Rooms Are Filled. I put my husband in charge of taking pictures during the book party in Boise, and therefore I have no pictures of the event to share. Here are photos of Day 4, the […]
Read more "Author Road Trip, Day 4: Boise to Bend"This post originally appeared in May on True STORIES. It chronicles the author’s book-tour-road-trip from Denver to Portland for The Rooms Are Filled. Day 2 of our road trip: Teton Pass through western Wyoming, Hwy 20 across Idaho, to Boise (For Day 1, click HERE): […]
Read more "Author Road Trip, Day 2: Jackson to Boise"This post originally appeared in May on True STORIES. It chronicles the author’s book-tour-road-trip from Denver to Portland for The Rooms Are Filled. There aren’t many things I love more than road trips. I’ll find any excuse to take one. So when my friend, Danielle, offered to help organize a book event for The Rooms Are Filled in Denver, where […]
Read more "Author Road Trip, Day 1: Denver to Jackson"Today, my daughter’s Big Girl Bed arrives. Today, I put away the crib that has been in one bedroom or another for six years, the crib I once arranged lovingly, tying little knots into bows and folding soft blankets in preparation. The ends of things have always saddened me. My family still jokes about the […]
Read more "The Cure for Melancholy"This Monday we welcomed our member Jessica Vealitzek to Portland’s feminist bookstore In Other Words to read from her newly published novel The Rooms Are Filled. Other local members of the PDXX Collective were her opening acts. It was an auspicious day: the day the Oregon ban on same-sex marriage was struck down. Andrea Janda […]
Read more "Photos from the PDXX Collective Reading with Jessica Vealitzek"
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