Cutting the Psychic Ties

There is a woman following me around, stabbing me in the chest every time I go near my husband, so I go off on my own.  The pain is too much to bear.   “Why are you alone?” someone asks me. “It’s just easier that way.” “Why don’t you stab her back?” “She only wounds me, […]

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Love As a Four-Letter Word

My aunt gave up her daughter for a chance at love. Can’t remember which marriage it was – there were seven in all – but he didn’t want children, so she just asked around if someone would take M, then sixteen. A few relatives tried, but my cousin, the depths of whose rejection is unfathomable, strayed […]

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Denial Is a Poor Example

“Your homework for this week is to write about the things your mother taught you,” my psychologist advised at the end of our session. Memories have been resurfacing and along with them rage.  I am incensed that I was never protected from some of the things that happened to me. “Well, she taught me that […]

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Mother Never Warned Me

He’d always come early, my sister’s beau, hover over me with what I mistook for childlike interest, invite me to go for a ride in his shiny new sports car – a two-seater with overdrive.  I was barely fifteen. Looked like Bert Reynolds: dark hair, dark eyes, a stylish moustache.  He was Russian and broad-shouldered, […]

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Some Family I Can Live Without

“Mom, why do we never spend time with your family?  You have all these cousins I have never met.  What’s up with that?” I cringe when the topic of my mother’s family comes up, never really quite certain how to explain. “None of them like me,”  is the easy explanation, and in part, it’s true. […]

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What Memories Linger?

“My dreams have turned violent lately, lots of blood.  What could that mean?” “What does blood represent to you?” “Well passion, life giving, but these dreams have a woman being decapitated, a baby being cut with scissors, and it always occurs in connection to my childhood home.” “Not life giving, then.” “I usually convert the […]

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No One Will Ever Love You

A secret:  I had to teach myself how to receive love. Born fifth of my mother’s six children, I was unexpected – an ill-advised accident, given the difficulties my mother had in previous child births.  Conceived during a tumultuous time – after the father of her first children abandoned her, beaten and penniless – I […]

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Emotional Backlash (Or Happy F*@#king Mother’s Day)

This post is hard to write, however; I have no where else to vent, and need desperately to process what has happened. Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and inadvertently my two daughters and I had booked a mani-pedi for that date, the original intention being one last pampering for my middle daughter before she goes into […]

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Silence Is Not The Answer

Another celebrity has been acquitted of sexual assault charges because the female complainants did not hold up in court as credible witnesses.  I was neither a witness to the alleged occurrences, nor present for the court proceedings, and therefore, cannot comment on whether or not justice was indeed served.  On a personal level, however; I […]

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