M.C. Easton

A Prayer for a Friend

I met her when I was 19 years old. I’d been recommended for a job at the campus writing center, and she was the first staff member to greet me. It took me a minute to absorb this. Jana has cerebral palsy and relies on a wheelchair to get around. I was blinded by theContinue reading “A Prayer for a Friend”

Discomfort Required

I’m talking about the kind of discomfort that challenges us, by taking us exactly where we need to go. Audre Lorde, activist and writer, once wrote, “The severe abstinence of the ascetic…is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.” When I read this at the age of 21, the ground shifted beneath my feet. WithContinue reading “Discomfort Required”

Trauma and Compassion

What if the value of our suffering–its use–is that it gifts us with compassion? I think all along I have taken the wrong approach. As a writer, I believed I was writing about my suffering. But the truth of suffering is that it is the collective, common experience of our species–and indeed of life. Akira Kurosawa wrote,Continue reading “Trauma and Compassion”

Leaving the Fold

It wasn’t the scientific objections. The glaring fallacies and inconsistencies in the doctrine. For me it was the morality of the thing. The Mormon worldview refuses to face the human condition squarely. Buddha, at least, could admit that “lifeContinue reading “Leaving the Fold”

Revenge and Justice

It seems I write mostly about revenge. All my characters are exacting some kind of revenge. Or think they are. Yet I feel ambivalent about it. Is revenge justice? It can feel that way. But it’s a retributive justice. A justice that retaliates. And it always seems to cost something. Mattie, in True Grit, losesContinue reading “Revenge and Justice”

The Hardest Kind of Honesty

I tell lies. Whole packs of them. Mostly to myself, but I don’t think that in the least softens the crime. Because once I start to believe them, they get passed off on other people as truths. And then it just gets worse from there. But I don’t count fiction among my lies. Fiction, you’llContinue reading “The Hardest Kind of Honesty”

Repotting

So when Bob told me to start writing down my story last week, I didn’t know where this would take me. It was a leap of faith. A surrender, an act of trust in a teacher. The first few days were the hardest. All darkness in there, digging up roots, examining the soil. It wasn’tContinue reading “Repotting”

The Communities We Come By

Back when my brother and I were living in our first apartment, and I was 24, I went through this three-year obsession with self-help books. I read up on style, relationships, making friends, nutrition, career planning. One book recommended asking someone a series of questions about me. I was supposed to choose someone who knewContinue reading “The Communities We Come By”

Happiness

I remember the optimism of going home to someone. And how, months after the divorce, a part of me still lived back there on Roy Street. Waking to the sunrise in my attic room and thinking it was really from the second-story bay window there. How grief and change can displace one like that. AndContinue reading “Happiness”

Runaways

I come from a family of runners. My grandfather to California, my father north to Washington, a great-grandmother west from Virginia, my mother south to Hood River. We steal away to other towns, take on other names. But always, we run. My Grandpa Ellis and I both learned to slip out the back door. QuietContinue reading “Runaways”