Eight Personal Essays to Lose Yourself In...
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After Childbirth and Prolapse, I Turned to Weight Lifting
by Sarah Stoller
"When it comes to treating prolapse, there is no universal consensus among providers, and a widespread lack of evidence-based care borne of inadequate research. I experienced this myself: In my first year postpartum I saw four physical therapists—two paid for by my health insurance, and two out of pocket—none of whom agreed with one another. One told me I didn’t have a prolapse at all, another that I shouldn’t lift anything heavier than ten pounds (say, my baby), and another that I shouldn’t sit cross-legged (utter nonsense). I wove a frustrating, circuitous, and costly path before I found my way to the support that did help me. I found it not, as one would hope, through doctors who were concerned about my ongoing discomfort and distress but, as is the way with much of women’s healthcare, via very well-read, very angry women on the internet."
A Childhood Story
by Adam Carter
“I am well into my thirties when my father says to me, “I’m not afraid of dying, I just haven’t tried it yet.” It’s a one-off comment on a phone call that includes a play-by-play of how he convinced the cable company to give him another free month of HBO and a breakdown of his top five coaching candidates for the Indiana Hoosiers. It catches my ear, but I let it pass.”
At 46, It’s Time to Ditch Negative Self-Talk
by Rachel Kramer Bussel
"I turned 46 recently, and my birthday gift to myself was to banish negative self-talk. If I’m being honest, that’s hyperbolic; there’s no way that I will fully banish decades of thinking along the lines of ‘You’re bad at business,’ ‘You’re bad with money,’ ‘You’ll never be more than a law school dropout,’ and ‘You’ll never be in a successful relationship.’ But I’m certainly going to try."
Virgin Lands
by Brianna Avenia-Tapper
"Before I left for Kazakhstan, I bought a hot pink vibrator and packed it in a sock. They say that there is no sex in the USSR. In my experience there are actually no vibrator batteries. The thing ended up on my nightstand, inert and neglected beside my copy of The Second Sex. I would grapple there for my glasses in the mornings and then look out at the Tien Shan mountains looming in my bedroom windows, snowcapped and stern-browed, dwarfing the Soviet cinder block structures at their feet.
The 17th Day
by Christina Rivera Cogswell
"Global millions watched with me back in 2018 as Tahlequah, the orca also known also as J35, swam for 17 days, pushing the decomposing body of her dead baby though a thousand miles of Salish Sea. Today, Tahlequah is back in the news. The cetologists who spot her through heavy binoculars celebrate because the male calf that Tahlequah gave birth to last fall is still alive. In drone photos, the new babe frolics beside his mother. The celebrations, though, belie the weight of Tahlequah’s story—and summon my own, unfinished."
Giving Weight
by Ellen Santasiero
"A dance teacher once told me that when it comes to dancing, you exist only to the extent that you give weight to your partner. I realized that I had never really given weight in my relationships. When it came to relationships, I didn’t exist. No wonder I was depressed.”
Animal Me
by Beth Kephart
"I scream into the roar, but he can’t hear me. I say shut up shut up shut up which is mwah mwah mwah which is no sound at all against the blower. I slam the windows shut, but my quiet world is rattled. My quiet world, my quiet stuff are now the anger channel.”
Will the Mom Know What To Do?
by Sonya Spillmann
"There are hundreds of squirrels in our neighborhood, so when I say that I recognize this particular one, Chris looks at me with eyebrows raised. But this animal is not acting normal. She’s scattered. Distraught. She’s ... crying? I walk outside. And yes, she’s chirping. Over and over, repetitive and anguished.
Chris follows me outside. “How do you know it’s her?”
I don’t really. But somehow I recognize the behavior. The lost-ness, what do I do now-ness. The this-isn’t-what-was-supposed-to-happen-ness. She’s acting the way I would act if my nest fell out of a tree with my babies in it; if, out of nowhere, the world I lived in proved itself categorically unsafe. "
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