It’s interesting to me that The Mudroom’s first anniversary would fall on a month where the theme is Vocation, Career, Mission. When I was younger I adored Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and the legendary Harriet the Spy. I took out books from the library on the history of the FBI. I pretended I was […]
It’s Thanksgiving. I’ve been cycling through this mixed state of hypomania and depression all Fall. Relief came at the beginning of the month, like a release on a pressure valve, giving my mind and lungs the room I needed to breathe and just . . . be again. The cycling has slowed but has not […]
This isn’t the post I had originally started writing for this month’s “Disquietude, Distress, and Dread” theme. Originally, I was going to share with you how I’m learning that Fall and this last quarter of the year are when I’m most vulnerable to the symptoms of my illness. I had written words detailing how my […]
It’s dark in here, I told him, but all the lights in the room are on. It’s the first thing I can think of to explain my knees bouncing and my teeth chattering, even though I’m not cold. I am out of control. I am helpless, at the mercy of my brain. I am utterly […]
I came across a journal the other day with one of the only poems I’ve written in more than a decade. My college years were spent between literary criticism, philosophy papers, and procrastinating by writing poetry. But after life got increasingly full and more complicated, I let verse fall to the wayside. That fullness quite […]
My husband made me cry on our honeymoon. We rented a house that was set back from the road and surrounded by trees. The second night we kept hearing noises on the roof. Since we are people who consider the next block over from the ghetto the country, we were a little spooked. We were […]
A heads up: this post is about pornography, lust, masturbation, and sexual orientation, but more importantly it’s about a woman calling out to God in her desperate need and God answering her with Himself. Before you read it, please remember something that normally goes without saying: people have the right to share their lived experiences, […]
Up until yesterday afternoon, I hadn’t painted anything since June. Three months; no painting. Perhaps that doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but when paint is your Savior, blood, and breath, being without it is like slowly losing oxygen. When you go without what sustains you for an extended period of time you shrink […]
I was fifteen the day my heart broke. I was sitting in the nook off the kitchen inside my grandparents’ house, turning a tiny glass heart over and over in the palm of my hand, inspecting it as the light above us bounced off the trinket’s harsh edges, revealing a multitude of trapped rainbows. […]
I think it was the lack of oxygen that jolted me awake, but it might have been the sweating or the too-fast heartbeat. 0 to 60 in one second flat, my heart and lungs and brain were running a marathon at a dead sprint while the rest of my body laid in bed, trying to […]
I’m meeting Alyssa for the first time. She is a First Access counselor for Behavioral Health and she is facilitating my intake. She calls me in and asks me some questions. The questions are easy and difficult at the same time. I know all the answers, it’s the saying them out loud that is […]