What happens to writers when we shush out the rage and the urgency and craft our pieces to smooth lines of palatable bits? When our goal is to inform, not upset? When we worry: Will the essay be published? Read? Honored? Will I be paid? Is the real story ever written?
Author: kellyhedglinbowen
shortlisted for ~ the 49th Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, the 2017 Arts and Letters Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the New South Prize, & the Under the Gum Tree (dis)empowerment contest. In 2020, find Mystic Trinities in print: Catholic Women Writers: The Future of Unruly Women in the Church series.
I had the proverbial—I can’t believe my eyes—moment when I drove up the gravel driveway into my yard. In the afternoon heat, at the edge of the blossoming goldenrod, I spied a giant brown mass sprawled out in the shade of the apple trees. The Mini jolted forward when I hit the brakes bringing the
Gravity’s wide palm fights to support my growing burden. Taurus is an earth sign. A stalwart. A constant. Uncompromising. As Earth, I bear witness and carry with me the burden of memory. But my memory is more than a recollection of sweet sixteens, first loves, and pregnancies lost. My memory is not my own. Like
April 29 or 27 or 30, or that Monday morning after vacation when you are sitting in the radiology waiting room at 8:15 awaiting your 7:45 CAT scan. I might have been on time for my appointment had I remembered that I was driving to the medical center and not the dentist. I blew by
A six-pound, nine-ounce bundle of original sin, I was doomed upon arrival. In my infantile state, I failed to realize the totality of my holy burden. According to the Catholics, I was responsible for the mistakes of Adam and Eve, people I’d never met. Until I was baptized, I risked an eternity in Limbo, and
February 14, 2018, Valentine’s Day. The day 17 Hearts stopped beating. Another bloody day in America, where an allegedly troubled, young, white man shot up a high school with his AR-15. While Marjory Stoneman Douglas High was terrorized, I attended my fourth-grader’s chorus concert. 150 students and parents tucked into the Central School auditorium