I wrote this in 2015.  It has taken me 11 years to finally post it.  This piece has been updated to include more inclusive language.   This has been six years in the making.  Six years of saying I’m fine and I’ve moved on, when the opposite is true.  A lot can happen in a day.  Whole worlds change, you can experience heart-bursting joy or earth-shattering pain in just one course of 24 hours.  You can even experience both at the same time.  Oh, to experience both.  To cry and laugh, that’s...

This year, I promised myself I would publish one book, a book of poetry to be exact. It's comprised of poems spanning the last decade and some change of my life. I wanted a small win to keep me chugging along on the novel whose first draft is like 98 - 99% done.   After fighting with formatting, and wondering if I've lost my mind more times than I can count, I clicked order on the proof. It won't land in my hands first. The blessing and curse of traveling is that I have to pass the task of...

This piece began eight months ago.   Four months ago, our family embarked on a cross-country road trip in a big ass pickup truck with a bigger on the inside fifth wheel attached.  As we reach the junction where our journey is to pivot and expand beyond sea to shining sea, my therapist has tasked me with reflecting not just on the past four months but on the past two years as well and what I’ve learned, what has changed, since I pushed the cremation button and decided to rise from the ashes of...