I follow the choreography, beads of sweat forming at my hairline, my best friend next to me. The teacher is from London or New York or Moscow. He’s a big deal. It’s a dance festival in the mid-nineties, made up of competitions in different genres, showcases, classes, and workshops. I’m…

Not forgiveness, but maybe acceptance of my dead alcoholic parents I sit on the fluffy carpet, my legs pulled up, my back against the couch, my milk-drunk, sleepy newborn facing me, resting against my thighs. Eyes closed, mouth partially open with a little milk dribble trickling down her chin. I…

In fact, it reeks of toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing My mother once said the only thing she regretted was smoking, because it made her develop COPD (which eventually led to an early and painful death). In the same breath, she said that she had no regrets about her alcoholism. To my fucking face she said this. I know what…

At lunch one day, I stopped myself mid-sentence when I felt my teenagers’ open-mouthed stares. I had just run my fingers across the kitchen table and told them that was finally able to remove those white stains from hot serving dishes and cloudy condensation rings from glasses. They looked at…

And the three reasons I started going again after 20 years Three weeks ago, I went to my first Al-Anon meeting in 20 years. When I went in high school after my mom got sober, I hated it. All these meetings ever did was make me angry. Why should I have to change when I wasn’t the one with the problem…

“I just hate it when people call me pet names!” my 15-year-old tells me at dinner. I cringe immediately because I call her “love” all the time. “I like it when you call me those names, mom, but not when strangers do it.” Of course, I tell her she can…

The wrinkly, red-faced man nodded at me: “Take it. You’ve been staring at it long enough.” I’d wandered away from my mom in a nondescript convention center hosting a gemstone exhibition in some mid-sized German town. I’d been looking at the golden-yellow citrine stones, running my fingers over the smooth…

It’s just one of many very legitimate reasons to procrastinate the words I committed to writing. I’ve been dragging ass for weeks. I don’t like anything I write. I have to force myself to put down words. I spend an enormous amount of time thinking about how I’ve never had an interesting thought, how I have no stories left to tell, how nothing exciting ever happens…

It’s not as harmless as it sounds. My mom gifted me a silent retreat for my 16th birthday. Unfortunately, it was at a bleak nunnery, not a luxurious spa. The rainy, windswept hills outside matched the stark walls and sparsely furnished rooms inside. …