Be a Good Sport By Soraya Roberts Feature Competitive sports can mean professional and financial success — if they don’t compromise your mental health first. ‘Cheer’ and ‘Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez’ show how athletics can hurt as much as they can heal.
Please Don’t You Be My Neighbor By Krista Stevens Highlight “To watch those people vanish and be replaced by people who shine like glass, who cut through the sidewalks like knives but reflect nothing back, has been another scraping out. Am I still here? I don’t know anyone here anymore.”
At Mrs. Balbir’s By Jillian Dunham Feature Jillian Dunham traveled thousands of miles from home to get away from her grief. It found her anyway, in a stranger’s Bangkok apartment.
Inking Against Invisibility By Talia Hibbert Feature In the face of chronic pain, invisible illness, and medical discrimination, Talia Hibbert turned to tatoos to reclaim ownership of her body.
Eating To Save My Mind By Claire Fitzsimmons Feature Can diet determine the future of your mental health? Claire Fitzsimmons attempts to find out through a month of Whole30.
Menace Too Society By Soraya Roberts Feature Cancel culture suggests we can change the world from the outside in, but the misogyny and racism are coming from inside the house.
In Defense of Boris the Russki By Ayşegül Savaş Feature Ayşegül Savaş calls into question a kind of racism in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and laments the liberal reluctance to rebuke discrimination outright, regardless of its targets.
In Pocahontas County, Deep Divisions and a Gruesome Discovery By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from ‘The Third Rainbow Girl,’ Emma Copley Eisenberg interrogates various social conditions that might have contributed to a mysterious double murder in West Virginia in 1980.
Leadership Academy By Victor Wei Ke Yang Feature Victor Yang considers how his time as an immigrant rights organizer helped him understand his mother, and the guilt and obligation he carries from their relationship.
Through a Glass, Tearfully By Maureen Stanton Feature Maureen Stanton contemplates her history of crying in inappropriate moments, and considers tears from gender-based and political perspectives.
We Use Language as a Spade By Krista Stevens Highlight “Though the embryo was only seven weeks old, I loved it. I loved it and wanted it, and its life ended.”
Whatever Happened to ______ ? By Longreads Feature Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers.
Happily Never After By Soraya Roberts Feature By protecting ourselves and no one else, we destroy ourselves along with everyone else.
Searching Sephora for an Antidote to Aging — and Grief By Abby Mims Feature Five years after her mother’s death, while still grieving and suddenly middle-aged, Abby Mims turns to beauty products to cure what ails her.
The God Phone By Leora Smith Feature What happens when ordinary people play God to strangers? Leora Smith explores the history of one of the oldest art installations at Burning Man and the conversations that unfold there.
The Price of Dominionist Theology By Eve Ettinger Feature After leaving fundamentalism, Eve Ettinger grapples with the loaded theological heritage of evangelical personal finance teachings.
What Brings True Happiness: the Booze or the Bonding? By Krista Stevens Highlight “But there’s nothing wrong with a nudge toward examining the difference between what makes us happy and what is merely habitual.”
Elizabeth Wurtzel Made it Okay to Write ‘Ouch’ By Sari Botton Highlight Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.
What I Did for (Strange) Love By Laura Bond Feature As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.
Addiction’s Seismic Effects on a Family By Sarah Evans Feature A mother confronts the painful truths of trying to save a son who’s a danger not only to himself, but to the rest of the family as well.
Infatuation By Deena ElGenaidi Feature Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire.
(Who Gets to) Just Up and Move By Nicole Walker Feature Nicole Walker contemplates the nature of migration, and realizes there are two places you can never escape: the planet and your own head.
Deconstructing Disney: The Princess Problem of ‘Frozen II’ By Jeanna Kadlec Feature Audiences wanted Disney to give Elsa a girlfriend. But the Frozen franchise is at the center of the corporation’s latest princess project, whose nationalist concerns are decidedly here for the gay agenda.
If My Scars Could Talk By Tega Oghenechovwen Feature Tega Oghenechovwen contemplates the ways in which acute childhood trauma can infect and compromise relationships later in life.
Witness Mami Roar By Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez Feature Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez remembers growing up undocumented in the shadow of her mother and father’s tumultuous relationship.
Renovating a Family By Christine Kalafus Feature After her husband’s infidelity, Christine Kalafus re-architected her marriage. Now she needs to let her son in on the plans.
A Beloved Art Critic Sings His Swan Song By Sari Botton Highlight “Drink was destroying my life. Tobacco only shortens it, with the best parts over anyway.”
The Christmas Tape By Wendy McClure Feature Wendy McClure recounts how an old audio tape of holiday music becomes a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
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