Recent revelations about author Alice Munro cause this writer to reflect on her own childhood

One Woman Finds Trauma in Unexpected Places in Getting a Bilateral Mastectomy

Dread and terror are best dispersed by mundane reality. At the age of 15, as I made the final steps into my isolation room for a bone...

Trauma prepares one for trauma. I have a deep and developed knowledge of suffering. I know what it is and how I want to handle it. I know...

Every journey is easier once begun. So I think to myself and say to myself as I cross another threshold in the architecture of oncology....

Because my parents punished me every time I asserted myself, my nervous system continues to recoil every time I do so, even at the age of...

I shall close the long and gruesome history of gaslighting in my life with the following fact: my psychiatrist of almost 20 years lost...

Not allowed to speak my thoughts or show my feelings, I was driven by my family of origin into art. More like, taken, tied, threatened,...

I have broken the family contract. My mother enforced it: we (mother and three daughters) were never to acknowledge or object to my...

Whenever I doubt myself, the continuity of my mind and my body, all I need to do is dance, turning and winding and bending and...

If the abusers and alcoholics in my life sentenced me to silence, then in silence I learned and became acute. Who knew listening and...

I think too much about goodness. Like any child I was taught that being good was ideal, “good” was what you should aspire too, “good” was...

Hold off, Death, I say, Not for me today, Not for the immediate future. I walk away healthy from the cancer clinic. I walk away healthy...

I keep waiting to be tried for my crimes against humanity. What crimes, you might ask? (I ask myself as well, in constant evaluation of...

Because I was determined to live fully and deeply, I weaned myself off psychiatric drugs. The suffering was intense but worthwhile....

Having recently cut all ties with my family of origin, I have moved from anger, shock, and loss to feelings of freedom, joy, and release....

My parents’ training of me started early and was original in its cruelty. Christmas day, 1975, when I was five years old, I cried because...

Even before I confronted death at age 15, I had tastes, desires, and a temperament that did not fit. I danced, and sang, and immersed...

I have told my story, read and reread it, edited and proofed it, polished and published it. So goodbye to all that. I slam the door on...

There are women who taught me how to live. How to listen to myself and others. How to ask questions and stay curious. How to explore. How...