Mental Health

Carving Words Into Bones

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about mortality—specifically, my own. Perhaps it’s because my husband is in his mid-forties now and his mind is grappling with aging and ageism in his career field. Maybe it’s his sudden concern for our future, for what legacy he’s leaving behind for our sons. Perhaps it’s because I […]

If Only

The Mudroom is a place for the stories emerging in the midst of the mess. Our vision is simple: make room for people. If only I knew then what I know now . . . maybe I wouldn’t have suffered as much. If only I knew then what I know now . . . maybe […]

Revelation is Not a Guarantee

For a three-month stretch when I was seven or eight, I tried to learn how to pray. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull a children’s prayer book down from the shelf and move it to the crack of light that shone in from the hallway. I opened it up to the Lord’s Prayer and read […]

Straining for the Light

For a long time the threat of a new year brought with it an onslaught of more darkness, more enervating melancholy, more long, gray days ahead to suffer through. It was nothing to celebrate.  At the end of one of those especially difficult years I met Alece Ronzino online. She too had experienced a year (or more!) like […]

Our Favorite Posts of 2015

Last week we gave you the most-viewed posts of 2015, according to the WordPress stats algorithm. This week we are getting a little more personal. These are the posts that we feel represent us individually more than any number of page views ever could. Maybe it’s the one that resonated the most, measured by the […]

Top 10 posts of 2015

We hosted so many amazing posts this year. Here are the top 10. 10. When Good Girls Get Angry by Tanya Marlow I am the good girl, and good girls do not get angry. My mind shuts down with that one phrase. I should be the bigger person. It doesn’t matter that I feel wronged. Why […]

Mudroom News #4: Meet Rozella White

Introducing our newest monthly contributor, Rozella White!! Rozella Haydée is my name. It comes from both my grandmothers, women of faith, who sacrificed greatly for their families. One was the great-granddaughter of slaves, who despite hardships remains steadfast, upbeat and gives LOVE. The other, an immigrant with roots in three countries, was an artist committed […]

I Know Why They Chose to Sink

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 […]

Wakefulness and Werewolves

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 […]

Painting is My Sanity

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 […]

Hope in My Broken Heart

  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. […]