Share your story. Raise your voice. Write for us! — You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. — Anne Lamott Updated January 1, 2023, by Suzanna Quintana, editor-in-chief We are accepting new writers! *Please read through our formatting and submission guidelines if you would like to become a…

I dedicate all my words to those from my past who want me to stop talking. — I used to be a good girl, otherwise known as a girl who only had nice things to say about the men around her and if she didn’t have anything nice to say then she better keep that shit to herself. I also was a tomboy, backyard pool diving champion…

Bet your ass I’m judging that book by its cover — I don’t live in a glass house and throw stones at my neighbors (who would report my ass to the HOA if I did). I don’t have a high horse to sit on (or any horse for that matter). I’m not a holier-than-thou hypocrite (I prefer the company of other…

You have to learn to breathe again — Who the fuck are you? I’m sorry, have we met? Hey can you tell me where I can find Suzanna? The woman in the mirror couldn’t answer my questions. It had been only a month since I left my marriage to a diagnosed narcissist. …

Is there nowhere women can exist safely anymore? — She was on a morning hike. Actually, “hike” makes it sound like she was up in the mountains, far away from civilization. But it was just a walking trail, of which we have miles of here in the Valley of the Sun. Miles and miles. Trails that wind into the…

No answer was an answer — My father hates me. I’m not being dramatic. He told me so. My mom had sent me an email that she received from him, which had a link to an article I wrote about trying to understand how he was still alive and able to continue his campaign of abuse…

His love language was physical touch, mine was… — We were given the assignment of reading The Five Love Languages. Our marriage therapist, a young woman whose master’s degree was as fresh as the ink on her diploma, believed the solution to our marital strife would be found in the book’s pages. “Your homework for next week is to…

Can we stop with the victim-blaming already? — Ah that almighty elixir known as tough love, administered by people who think they’re doing you a favor by “telling it to you straight.” Ain’t no sugar helping that medicine go down and it’s for your own damn good! But is it? I recently read a piece by a woman…

When you can’t see what’s right in front of you, look within — I used to wish he would hit me instead. Then I could tell the woman in the mirror, See! There’s a bruise! There’s a black eye! There’s the proof! But he never hit me. So in the absence of physical violence to validate my suffering, without any idea of what…