Family
How It Feels to Watch Your Son Getting His Hair Cut
In the battered barbershop chair, Faris sits slightly camouflaged and crumpled, as though he is a mystery even to himself.
At the Twilight of a Dog’s Life, How Do You Know When It’s Time?
Aging is a funny thing. You’re not sure if the world has changed, or if a hundred cellular mutations have changed your place in it.
My Hope as a Parent Is Something I Share with My Birth Mother
This folder contained memories I did not have, information about a family I did not know.
Rattled: The Recklessness of Loving a Dog
I believe that loving a dog is basically mortgaging future heartbreak against a decade or so of camaraderie—I’d understood this when I got Red. But when confronted with it, I felt shamefully angry at myself for even getting him.
The Greatest Challenge of Raising an Autistic Child as an Autistic Parent? The Ableist World We Live In
Being disabled means hundreds of thousands of people believe they always know better than you do.
After My Son’s Suicide, I’m Learning to Navigate Emotional Minefields in My Home
Maybe, over time, the ephemera of Jack’s life will become less explosive, like a landmine whose triggering mechanism has eroded, rendering it harmless.
What I Would See if I Looked in the Mirror of Erised
My heart’s deepest desire was to see my mother again, yes, but also to glimpse a portrait of normalcy that I had never known in the years of her illness.
When You’re a Mom with Anxiety Disorder, You Know the Monsters Are Real
I have such immense anxiety. It sweeps me up into its furious winds. And my kids are at the middle of the storm.
What I Imagined Motherhood Would Be, and What It Is
When you give birth to a life, you are also giving birth to a death.
On Loving a Sibling I’ve Never Met
I wonder a lot about you. Like what your name would have been if you stayed, at least a week or two until your naming ceremony was done.