Tag Archives: abuse

On Seeing My Father’s Face for the First Time in Nine Years

I can’t say for sure exactly why, but two days ago, I sat down at my computer, opened Google, and typed in my parents’ names. I was overcome with longing to find out what had ever happened to them. We haven’t spoken in nine years. I hadn’t felt the least bit curious before in allContinue reading “On Seeing My Father’s Face for the First Time in Nine Years”

How Hatred Helped Me Heal

There’s been a lot of family talk lately about a relative of mine who left one abusive marriage only to recently end up in another. She has endured so much assault and abuse that what little of herself remains is embittered, territorial, and angry—even towards her own children. But how did her path turn out soContinue reading “How Hatred Helped Me Heal”

Disrupting Porn Fantasies: Midnights at the Electric Blue Angel

A new work written by Josh Hornbeck (Heavy Lay the Chains, The Beating of a Warrior’s Heart), Midnights at the Electric Blue Angel swivels a white-hot spotlight onto porn fantasies and reveals the abusive sexual objectification that lies beneath. The play opens on two young people sipping coffee on a first date. Suddenly, a spotlightContinue reading “Disrupting Porn Fantasies: Midnights at the Electric Blue Angel”

Resilience: The Last of the Human Freedoms

The dandelion. A weed, everyone says, but it’s always been one of my favorite flowers. That lion’s mane of yellow petals. Ferocious. Shooting up anywhere. Everywhere. Between cracks in the sidewalk, among the rose beds, under front steps, in ditches along the roadside. Sprouting over lawns. I’ve yet to see a boundary the dandelion can’tContinue reading “Resilience: The Last of the Human Freedoms”

The Wiffle Bat

“You remember the time I tried to kill you?” My brother asks, “Which one?” “The one in the backyard with the wiffle bat.” He doesn’t remember that particular attempt. He says, “We both did a lot of things we regret.” “Yeah.” But what is regret? The recognition that something could have been different—but wasn’t? HowContinue reading “The Wiffle Bat”

Circa 1939

Grandpa Ellis didn’t talk about the time he spent riding the rails. He didn’t talk much at all. He’d come of age in the company of hungry, hollow-eyed men, and he’d learned their silence well. Latched on like barnacles to the roofs of freight cars, they clicked off the miles of open country. He diedContinue reading “Circa 1939”

Truth Will Out: Stop Silencing and Start Talking

When I was 25 years old, I opened a conversation with my parents about the past. Or tried to. I asked my parents some difficult questions. I wanted to hear their own experience of our family history. I wanted to rip off the blood-crusted bandages, so we could all begin to heal. My family had operatedContinue reading “Truth Will Out: Stop Silencing and Start Talking”

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”

Let Yourself Feel It

People look at me and think it’s my rage I need to get in touch with. But it’s not the rage I’m afraid to feel. It’s the grief. To get through this wall, I have to drop my sword and go into the breach—into the darkness—unarmed. But there’s so much grief in there that I’mContinue reading “Let Yourself Feel It”

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

I inherited my mother’s rage. And she had a lot to be angry about. Growing up in small-town Kennewick in the 1950s and 1960s, she was told she couldn’t do what the boys did. Couldn’t race bikes out in the street. Couldn’t beat them at math. So she did. But, as a consequence, she couldn’tContinue reading “Rage Against the Dying of the Light”