Women Who Write to Heal Archives

Welcome to The Archives, a dedicated space for the Women Who Write to Heal community to share their work.

Women Who Write to Heal is a free monthly public read-aloud in Astoria, Oregon, where women volunteer to share their stories of healing.

Disclaimer: The stories and viewpoints shared on this page are uncensored and reflect the unique viewpoints and experiences of the individual authors. The content found on this page is not necessarily affiliated with the viewpoints or experiences of event organizers or the website host. Thank you to all of our brave writers for contributing to the archives and thank you for visiting!

Invisible Injuries (July 2026)

My mother often tells me that my first year of life was the hardest of hers. I was born at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. It's a teaching hospital so there were twenty-odd people in the room. She got STREP throat three times that year, at home with three kids under the age of six. My dad was clerking at the Supreme Court for Justice Powell, apparently convincing him to be the swing vote in a landmark anti sodomy (let's face it: anti gay) decision. I picture her sobbing while breastfeeding me, tears streaming down her chest onto my infant body. One of the stories in our family lore was how my dad asked my mom a few years into their marriage if she'd ever be happy. We never heard her answer. Growing up, my mom spent a lot of time in her room, shut away in the dark. We knew without being told that it was anathema to disturb her, choosing instead to play along that she was merely “resting her eyes" when she emerged with sleep lines imprinted on her face. Her moods could fill the house, elated or dejected depending on the day or week. Everyone who knew her saw only the bubbly, outgoing version - a bon vivant for the ages. I learned from watching her that a facade was required to move through life. She was herself a product of her upbringing, hemmed in by the weight of the expectations upon her to be a wife and mother above all else. Her dad would sometimes pin her arms to her sides as a child, physically trying to shrink her space and her childhood ebullience. As Mormons, we were taught that we were a persecuted bunch (never mind the reason being primarily tied to fleeing anti-polygamy laws). When visiting our cousins in the motherland of Utah during summers, we would reenact the story of the Mormon pioneers who went West. Brigham Young, their leader at the time, supposedly placed his walking stick in the dirt and declared with the authority vested in him as a straight white man that “this is the place." I can still hear the song we were taught from the time we could walk about the perseverance and steadfastness of those who came before: “pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked AND walked." Even they wore masks. I remember one evening in high school when our parents sat us down to announce that my aunt and uncle were getting a divorce because she was bipolar and had been sleeping with other men and writing checks to homeless people. I was terrified, but reassured that this bipolar business was at least only present through marriage in my extended family. As high school hit I was overcome with a deluge of depression. I chalked it up to my best friend moving away and not making varsity soccer; easy outs for what were really the early manifestations of my own mood disorder and of enduring childhood sexual abuse at the hands of our family doctor, a fellow Mormon. I've spent the last six years untangling myself and my psyche from the damage that man did. He was granted blanket trust by those who were supposed to protect me and given unfettered access to a host of impressionable young girls and women. Our bodies were not our own, they always belonged to a man. Even in the Mormon temple, we could not pass into eternity without a man first calling us through. A man was always an intercedent on our behalf to talk to god. Men held the priesthood and doled out blessings as they saw fit. I currently await that man's criminal trial alongside 174 women from the civil case and countless others who go unnamed. My turmoil was met with familiar platitudes: have you tried praying? The lord heals all wounds. Have questions about your eternal existence and your place therein? Put those on the top shelf. Not everything is meant to be answered in this life. I knealt, but not to pray. I buckled over with the weight of the things taking up the top shelf. It became so burdened and dust-covered that it eventually shattered, but not before I ended up at a Mormon college, once again in hiding from myself and my truth. In a twist of irony, my favorite class in college was folklore, culminating in my thesis topic of the virgin/whore dichotomy in fairytale; yet I put blinders on to my own duality. I had never tried alcohol in high school and was quickly swept away by its ability to shroud my misery in forgetfulness. Being present in my body felt like torture without it. But it too became a burden, praying instead to a porcelain goddess because I could never simply admit when enough was enough. Waking up in unfamiliar places with virtual strangers, I'd tell myself this was all part of the college experience. From the outside, it may have appeared that I had it all figured out. I graduated cum laude and editor of my college newspaper. I was admitted to Teach for America, a program which favored Ivy League snobs who had a five year plan to end up at Deloitte after “doing their time". So why did everything seem so difficult? I stumbled through my 20s, picking fights and having immense hardship with work and relationships. I indulged in the extreme sport of performative happiness and overachieving at my own expense. Some alter ego decided it was a good idea to take night classes for my MBA, a choice my present self finds simply incomprehensible. My next clearly manic episode was in Kenya. My psychiatrist recently explained to me that mania is often overlooked by both patients and practitioners because it's" ego-syntonic”, meaning the symptoms are not pathologized like depression and anxiety, but are more often mistaken for normal (even positive) aspects of a person's character. This certainly held true of my time there - peppered with whirlwind relationships and a sex drive that could power a tank. I would spend many nights not sleeping at all, at a club high on MDMA sold to us by Sticker the drug dealer, in little yellow SpongeBob squares. Through it all, oblivion was the goal, no matter the cost to me or anyone else in my wake. It wasn't until moving home and discovering I was pregnant with my now ten-year-old son that I had a wake-up call. And it didn't happen overnight. I was talking with a friend recently about sobriety and she said, “sobriety is like playing whack-a-mole: just when you think you've fixed one problem, another pops up." In sobriety, I finally had a come-to-Gaia moment with myself and all that I had experienced, some by my own choosing, and a lot more because of a man’s agenda. I sought out therapy for the first time in a long time. I joined the ex-Mormon subreddit and found joy in community. I wrote again in journals, leaving them in drawers or closets absentmindedly only to discover them years later. I tried meditating, but found that too challenging in my fragile state, like a freshly-hatched bird, feathers still wet and downy. While the AA rooms were full of many good people, ultimately I couldn't get behind the dogmatic and patriarchal nature of the program. I had spent so much of my life running from those aspects of my youth that I could no longer stomach them in my 30s. But the serenity prayer is still a banger: " to accept the things I cannot change.” Radical acceptance doesn't mean being okay with the way things are. It means recognizing when things are truly just outside your domain. And there's a freedom in that. Regardless, I realized that the alcohol did its job of providing escape. But I no longer wanted to escape. I wanted to live, even if that meant by the skin of my teeth. Just like my mother, my moods can fill a room, worming into small spaces and suffocating all else. These days, I'm trying to grow my capacity for living in the uncertainty. There is a dialectical conversation happening around us at all times anyway. The moon is subtle and mysterious, shining as she does because of the brilliance of the sun. New life springs up just as other lives pass on. I heard that my generation is in a particularly difficult spot because we have to parent ourselves, parent our parents, and parent our kids with raw emotional honesty, all while attempting to heal from generational trauma. I know I can't do it all perfectly or even well. Yet as I write this, I have paused many times to chase my one-year-old around the house. He squeals in delight as he cooks up an imaginary dinner with the pots and pans in the kitchen. I feed him a bite of garlic before tossing it in the pan. He promptly spits it out. “Well at least we know you'll be protected from vampires!" I say. We both smile.

Binge Box

by Dawn Shepard

My people
Are overeaters
And we like to hide
At the dinner party
We’re seated with judgement
By our side
Next to shame,
And our pride.
But as the plate
Is lowered before me
The bodies near,
I don’t even see.
I’m lost in salty sauces
And smooth potatoes.
Vinegar dressings
On wavy greens.
Use my buttered roll
To wipe the dish clean.
Though full,
I devour the caramel dessert
Almost splitting my seems.
As I reach for another bun
The lights click dark
Except for the one
Blinding my to pry
Let the judgment start
Question me, until I cry
Feel the weight of my full
And size of my eyes
The snap back to now
An escape from the eating cow.
The heaviness of the moment
Being seen in real time.

An itemized review of my eating crime.
The list of things I did wrong
Should have ate salad instead of that
The aftermath trap
Should have had only one bite of cake
Put down the fork
I’ve eaten enough for a horse.
Of course
You have
It’s okay.
You stopped.
Trapped your Repeat
In a box
Captured the binge,
The cycle where you overeat.
Let it scream in the dark
Kick and wear itself out
Breath deeply
As you listen to its muffled shouts
It will throw a tantrum
Because you forced it to stop
Wait until you hear itself drop.
Then you can safely lift open the top.
Let the light shine on its sweaty self.
Offer your Repeat a hug.
Because it’s been through a lot.
Hold its hand,
Stroke it’s back
And it may begin to talk.

French Bread House

by Dawn Shepard

Sometimes, I pretend I’m a woman
in a healthy relationship with food.
She goes to parties to catch up.
She’s confident,
interested
gives her full attention to the person speaking.
Stands next to the pile of charcuterie and cake
and ignores them.
Too invested in what’s being said.
Like it’s not even there.
Not in the room.
Maybe takes an olive and chews it fully while listening.
But I can’t hear her over the melty smooth cheese.
The splayed baguette
The lovely caverns left from the yeast in the bread.
The warm cave.
I can hide there.
There’s so much room for me.
Yes, I’ll camp there,
No, I could move in.
I’ll get a couch and a desk
It’s so warm I won’t need a blanket.
But definitely a chair,
Some soft light.
And a knife.

Donut Rabbit Hole

by Dawn Shepard

When I look at the donut

A tan tire

Slickwithglaze

I want the soft

Feathery insides

I want sugar electricity

Frenzied energy

The weight in my stomach

The balloon filling my acid room

I want the hole

The empty calories

The hollow promise

The nothingness

The lie.

I want the fantasy

Where I die

Where I’m mourned

Without being scorned

Loved for who I was

Grabbed by angels

Yanked from this mind

From responsibility

And fear,

And my past laughing at me

In my ear

And the fried doughball

Shuts it all up.

Muffles its hateful shouts

Allows from some freedom

From me, and my insanity.

Adds padding for soft landings

And instant escapes.

Holds me hand while I’m sanding

Down my dreams to dust.

Stored in a pouch

tight around my neck

“Don’t forget,

you have ideas you neglect.”

And then the tears of regret.

Should I have eaten that?

Was it bad?

My body a public review

So a bunch of you

can deem me “okay”

Say, my shape fits YOUR mold

Doesn’t trigger YOUR problem

with my fat folds.

Then my rebel shows up

switch blade shimmering bright

Wants to start a fight

And I intervene

That’s enough

This mental community session

Has gotten out of hand.

Thank you for your comments

It’s time to stop.

Bring my attention back

to this trip to the donut shop.

The humans that made

These bread delights

They got up in the middle of thenight. To let them rise in

Their own time.

proofed them twice.

For a perfect give

And a wonderful bite.

Can I enjoy this

Treat for what it is?

Thank you hands that

Made this round home

Smell the yeast,

Taste the sweet

And let this be just

a simple treat.

Loose Ends (June 2026)

Loose Ends

By Martha Ellen

In the Spring I could die of natural causes under the lilac bush with hummingbirds darting about.

My heart could stop when I linger a moment by Karl’s roses or near the Japanese Snowbells to inhale their fragrance.

If I get dementia, I could wander into the woods, slip on a mossy rock and die from exposure to the delight of thousands of beetles and worms.

I could die from shock or fright. [Highly likely.]

If I fall and hit my head tying shiny flags onto the fig tree to keep the Jays away, I could take my last breath lying there in the dirt wondering why the California poppy seeds never sprouted.

If I am mortally wounded in a crash, before I closed my eyes for the last time, I could look at a print of Lamentation [The Mourning of Christ] by Giotto I keep folded in a pocket for just such an occasion.

Outside the front door to the Senior Center, Betty could accidentally back over me. [She almost did last week.]

I could get some incurable illness and fade away in silence or scream in agony strapped to a bed until the end [like Aunt Opal.]

Someone [not me] could shoot me through the heart.

My house could catch fire and I could die from smoke inhalation trying to save my dog. Toby would die in my arms. He would sneak me into heaven with him.

The brakes could fail going down Eighth Street hill. My car could careen into the river where I would drown in the cold dark water with fishes swimming merrily by as though nothing were amiss.

I could kick the bucket choking on a too big bite of cherry pie and no milk to wash it down.

When I stop in Hammond to take a picture of a bull elk [like some clueless tourista] he could gore me to death, a spike of his antler piercing my eye, smashing though my brain, causing me to flail wildly in death throes like a hooked fish. [Yikes!]

The expansive vista at Ecola could make me dizzy. I could fall off the cliff where Search and Rescue could not get to me.

I could have a fatal brain hemorrhage by the birdbath out front - the one with Sartre’s Being and Nothingness I put there a few years ago for the birds to read as a joke.

I could die laughing while looking at The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca, the resurrected Christ rising in Glory while the Roman guards slept. “You snooze, you lose.” [LOL]

I could bring to mind fleeting moments - the sweetest Summer afternoon sitting between Cait and Liam on their front steps when time stopped and we felt the Universal pulse; or at hospice that grey Winter evening when I left Donna in her bed, smiling, her last words: “We’re two old kippers in a box.” I could expire longing for them.

I could look up into the heavens one morning, see the face of Father Lance filled with compassion, hear his welcoming words “Come. Fear not” and surrender. [He’s been looking after my sister until I can get there.]

I could have died from sorrow when my dad’s heart failed, the beat slowed, his blood pressure dropped. I could have lain down next to him and begged to leave with him. Or I could have drifted away into nothing at the foot of the bed when Eric was on life support, or succumbed to grief when Robin screamed, “Get out of my house!” Actually, I could have died from sadness over all the others who I loved but did not love me back. [Or maybe they did and, like Father Headly said, the Enduring Enigma is we hurt each other anyway.]

I could collapse from a massive stroke while gazing into the sky watching brave Jack the Crow fight off a huge raptor to protect the chicks in the nest. Olga can’t do it by herself.

Even decades after the first time failed in the LaBagh Woods that cold afternoon in late Autumn, another one of Henry’s plans to murder me could still succeed. [That’s why I covered the windows, changed the locks and made an escape plan. Take the North passage that leads from the dining room to the kitchen, grab the cash out of the Emergency Money Teapot, out the back door, down the steps, along the West side of the house, through the neighbor’s driveway to my car. I keep it gassed-up.]

There could be a supernova and I could be burnt to a crisp with all my stuff, and the rest of humanity, and all the animals and plants, and all the people I love and don’t love.

In my mind’s ear I could hear Eric’s perfect note that evening during a concert in Longview, or I could hear three-year-old Robin say, “Mama, I don’t want you to be throwed away” and just fall over dead, my maternal heart burst, love and joy spilling out.

I could rot away from guilt and shame like that door in the Ivan Albright painting, Everything I Should Have Done I Did Not Do.

A crazy person hiding in the women’s bathroom at the rest area on highway 26 might slit my jugular. [It happened to someone else in some other rest area.]

I could freeze to death with Dale in his cabin in Alaska where he tries to hide from the combat nightmares. His suffering no embrace could heal, though I’d try. [I’d finally know the two angels who visited me when I was five were us!]

I could die from a broken heart like Vince said when I couldn’t stop sobbing after reading him one of my bonjour tristesse poems. [He wanted me to get it published, but I lost it.]

A man could kill me. They’ve tried before. Beat me to death, maybe, or rape me and strangle me so I won’t tell. [Fast-talk wouldn’t save me.]

The night I saw my soul hovering over me in a glowing dimensional ellipse, I thought I was dying but it was just one of those hallucinations I had during withdrawal, like the almost mouse scampering across the vestibule floor, the kind old Native woman with saucer eyes or the firefly that smiled. [There are no fireflies in Oregon, BTW.]

The cougar spotted on Fourth Street could stalk me on the way to the mailbox, pounce and tear out my throat before I knew what hit me.

I could stumble over some junk on the floor and fall. Unable to get up I’d expire from dehydration and hypothermia before someone could find me. [like Aunt Jessie]

I could even pass away in my sleep enthralled while waltzing through a dreamy vision of the millions of the luminous threads connecting all living things.

I don’t want to croak in a small room with pale green walls, machines beeping and an IV delivering saline at the bend in my elbow. Though, if I do, the colors and the sounds will probably transcend the ordinary, ascend into the sublime and I’ll pass-on in a reverie certain my mom loved me. [And, if she didn’t, it won’t matter.]

A Thought Experiment in Death

Do not burn me when I die.

Do not place me in an oven to cook for that predatory patriarch in crones clothing lurking inside a sickly sweet place.

Do not let me die like I did in my past lives.

Do not make me smaller than I was in life.

Lay me on a pyre if you must

An honored warrior

Parts of me drifting in flickering light

One last time, raised in heat

Cooling to blanket the earth like a dream of snow on a soft night

Lay me on the bed of a rainforest.

Where nutrients are caught up in the trees.

And the seemingly plentiful are desperate for something new.

Let them use every part. Dispersing me quickly into the bodies of their young, and what is left will soak into the soft bed beneath.

But such things are not done.

We must be sneaky in our reclamation of death.

Let me feed a tree when the part of me that moves has gone on to somewhere new.

And if you cannot....

If the pressures and rules and madness leaves you little choice.

If you need me to fill another role in life...

My dear one. I love you.

So spread my ashes in the soil around your home in the dark of night

or under the cover of gardening.

Place in the bulbs of flowers or brambles as you go. An ancestral moat.

And I will live on

encircling you with my power.

If you move, just take me with you. A picked flower, a bulb, a pocket of soil. I am the multitudes now. Let me lighten your footsteps as you journey on.

Or place me in a simple box, spacious and solitudinous

as though a fairy tale in the woods,

waiting for the kiss of mycelium to make me live again.

Place your handprints on the sides and

Lower me beneath the surface.

Throw seed as well as flowers on the lid.

And there i will lay, content. While you revel in another life well lived.

Dance upon my grave.

Let the thundering beat of your life start the process of my decay.

Taunting the terrible, gentle arms of death with each feral act.

Hair flung wild in moonlight.

rain dancing it's own beat as you raise your face to the sky, letting it grace your mouth as you howl defiance and rage and exhilaration.

The ocean and fire hissing around you as you lose yourself to euphoric grace.

Rebellious and incomplete

Each moment closer to the one

when I join the mind

creeping through the soil

The ultimate crone mother

The mediator

The messenger

The transporter

The giver of life and wisdom and resilience and time.

But that is not all.

I will not go into the conveyer belt of death without one last trick.

Inside my box, leave another. This one small.

Place it at my unclad toes.

Something precious and rebellious inside.

Devious and innocent.

Other heartbeats so I am not alone.

With a hunger,

not for flesh or knowledge,

but for the boxes that hold us.

Termites.

Let them feast.

Let them let the mushrooms in.

Let them find their way.

Let them commit a tiny destruction.

Let them set me free.

Change Your Mind?

I’ve walked this path 1000 times.

A+B=C

Tried and true.

Consistent.

Comfortable.

It’s all I’ve ever known.

The connection, flawless.

Proven.

Foot traffic has worn down the center.

A+B=C

I think this is me.

It is what it is.

I am who I am.

This is what makes me, me…

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

A+B=C

Or does it?

What if you change your mind about your mind?

What if A+B actually equals X?

Or what if there is no solution?

What?

Impossible.

Our brains create stories. Some of them are born before we are. The neurons fire and form connections. The story is told over and over… so, we believe it. When someone comes along and tells us something that contradicts that story, we will refuse it. Nope. Closed circuit. These neurons fire together. This is the route they always take. You must be wrong… If A+B=X, then who am I? If the things I know to be true are challenged, then there’s no longer comfort in knowing. My mind is tidy, and safe because I keep everything filed in boxes, classified. A+B=C. Right? Wait.. Is that the way the world works? Are all things either black or white? Maybe it’s more complex than that….

But once one box tips over, one connection broken, I can no longer trust my own thoughts, my own knowingness. I begin to rummage through the other boxes, spilling thoughts, misplacing stories. I dump them out and examine their contents. A continues to connect to B. A and B try to equal C. But, the path is murky. The rut is there, but new trails appear. New… trails? Decisions to make. Work to do. I need to clean up. This is how I make sense of the world around me. This is how I know where I belong. There’s safety in believing. But not all things are meant to be tidy. Not all information is permanent. Not all stories are over when the credits roll. It’s time to throw away the boxes. Leave some loose ends.

Salt Water

Filleted from head to toe, a vulture’s delight. As the blood rushes out of your gaping wound, I offer you no stitch, no bandaid… only pressure and a call to attend more presently to the hole you’ve stuck your fingers into in the name of healing. Salt isn’t only used to induce a sting, but also to tenderize. The sea water rushing from your eyes marinates your fractured heart. Open wounds heal loudly. What a blessing it is to be witnessed in this raw state.

**Some of these are pieces pulled from my book, The Real Love Story.**

And they all lived happily ever after…

When a story begins with ‘Once Upon a Time’ it’s nearly always cut short before reality actually unfolds. This story didn’t start with Once Upon a Time though; it started with ‘Welcome to the Book.’

2021:

No matter what we did, I always felt like we were the only two people in the Universe. I had no concept of time, yet wanted to fully embrace every second and every breath that we shared. It was an all consuming, intense, fairytale kind of story. Let me share some examples:

It was the first full moon of the year. We drove out to a campsite in the desert. We sat across from one another in camping chairs and shared a blanket next to the fire. We wrote down things we wanted to release, both those that troubled us and those that sparked joy, and we read them aloud to one another before burning them one-by-one. I leaned forward to hold him as he allowed tears to stream down his face for the first time that he could remember. When we were finished with the releasing ritual, I leaned in and kissed him for the very first time. It was exactly how I hoped and imagined it would be. We flowed together effortlessly, pausing from time-to-time to breathe each other’s breath.

Another night, we went back to the same campground. As soon as we got out of the car, I walked up to him and started kissing him. It was cold, but neither of us cared to start the fire or set up the chairs; we were lost in one another. We were fully consumed by a session of eye-gazing, breath sharing, body flowing, heart racing kissing. Each time we walked away from one another in an attempt to start the fire, eat dinner, or put on a jacket; we were instantly drawn back together. As he kissed on my neck and collar bone, I pulled my shirt to the side to expose my nipple. He drank from me, and kissed me, and held me in his perfect arms for hours.

On another occasion, we went to dinner and then grocery shopping. It was such a seemingly simple thing, but it was the most out of our bubble we had been yet. However, we were still very much wrapped up in each other. I realized I enjoyed doing the everyday things with him just as much as I enjoyed being in the middle of nowhere, lost in each other. This made things more real and tangible for me. This was when I really started hoping for a future with him.

Little moments from each time we were together are etched in my mind like the words to a country song that I feel so deeply. You know, the type of song that makes you want to love so hard that a single tear runs down your cheek, and you smile with just a little bit of hope that you may actually get to experience a love like that someday.

- The moment we stopped kissing to look up at the stars with humble amazement.

- That moment when our hands touched for the first time.

- The car ride home after dinner at the drive-in movies when I sang every country love song on the radio while holding his hand as tightly as I could.

- The way he shook his head with a slight smile because he was in awe about what we shared.

- The moment there was nothing I could do to feel close enough to him.

- When I pulled his mask down just to kiss him and then placed it back on his face.

- My fingers in his hair.

- The way he spun me and dipped me as we walked around the park in the dark.

Each of these moments were so vivid, so intoxicating, and they were real; I was really getting to experience them after all I had been through. If this were a fairytale, this is when they’d display, “AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER” across the big screen. But, unfortunately, as I am sure you gathered by the way this chapter began, this isn’t a happily ever after kind of story for the two of us.

Waiting…

Patiently

Impatiently

Patiently

2023:

Being with you was the first time I got to experience what it must be like to be with me.

You might be the reason I’m alone forever… you set the bar so high that not even you can reach it.

Waiting…

Patiently

Impatiently

Patiently

2024:

My hand between my thighs, my face soaked with tears; I cried out, “I’m still in love with him.” And then I woke up. What… the… fuck… I knew exactly who “he” was. But how had I suppressed that, ignored it, for so long? And how would I continue to do so now?

Waiting…

Patiently

Impatiently

Patiently

2025:

If you were mine, I would run out to greet you every time you arrived home

Dinner would not be ready, and I would be a mess,

But with you by my side I would always feel blessed.

Our connection, our vibe would be beyond what I can describe.

“I don’t know if I can see you,” I said. Because when I’m with you in person, you’re mine, and that’s not the reality… And I don’t know what to do with that.

I’ll give you one day. Six hours. Let’s see how that goes.

2026:

Oh. I have been telling people you’re my boyfriend. Is that cool?

Relationship Pact: If either of us wants to end the relationship, it must be done in person. Looking into each other’s eyes, skin-to-skin.

I walked in the room after we’d oscillated between fucking and making love for the past two hours. You were asleep. The blanket haphazardly draped across your body. The dim light softly highlighted the thicker parts of your body. My body was relaxed from pleasure, but you looked so delicious, still marinating in our love. As I lowered my body onto the bed, you let out a subtle, inviting groan.

Your car pulls into the driveway, I run out to greet you. We kiss in the open doorway. Then, we walk, together, into our home.

To-do lists

ADHD

The ringlet tips of my daughter's pigtails.

Ribbon curls

Electrical wires

Fringe

Tassels

Frayed denim

Macrame tails

Dandelion fluff

Cliffhangers

Kite streamers

Relaxed sunsets

Edges that breathe instead of bind

The pieces that blow wildly in the wind, that tickle softly against skin

You and me…..

Some ends aren't meant to be tied, or burned, or cut… Some are supposed to stay open.

Maybe A+B really does have infinite possibilities…

Fantasies (May 2026)

Coming soon...

Fantasies

by Dani Rose De Mer

As a sensitive child raised by emotionally out-of-touch parents, I turned to fantasies to survive. Some were what psychologists would call “maladaptive daydreams,” adaptations to a bad environment. Fantasies of being rescued, for instance. When children don’t receive love, they must imagine it.

I fantasized that my “real family” were secretly plotting to rescue me from the two mentally unwell adults who had stolen me at birth. There was no proof that my real family wasn’t coming. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So I stayed alert, ready. I watched out my bedroom window. When a strange car came barreling along our country road in a cloud of dust, I’d run out in front of the house and let the driver get a good look at me, just in case. But no one ever stopped.

Early one morning a man called my parents’ house from a blocked number. In a deep, raspy voice my mother didn’t recognize, a man said he was going to kidnap her children.

“Finally!” I thought when my mom told me about it.

But the thrill was short-lived. My mom was freaked out, which made me freaked out. However, she had other things to worry about. My father was gone working a 24-hour shift at the fire station, and she had to get to work. So she assured me the call was probably a wrong number because the man wasn’t specific on the details. Kidnappers probably dial wrong numbers all the time, was her thinking.

“Do you feel okay staying home alone today after school?” she asked my sister and I. I was 12 and my sister 8. “Someone said he was going to kidnap you, but he didn’t sound all that serious.”

I asked my mom, could we possibly stay at the neighbor’s after school that day? And we did, but two days later, Dad was back on shift and we were on our own again. We all assumed, or merely hoped, that the kidnapper had moved on to the next family or called the operator and got the right number.

That week my dad showed my sister and I where he hid all his guns. There were many, many guns because my father had his own fantasy, and it looked a lot like Escape from New York starring Kurt Russel.

“Here’s the shotgun,” he said to me, opening the door to the coat closet.

The shotgun leaned against a big flat cardboard box containing hundreds of pieces of a dollhouse my parents bought me for Christmas one year but never built. They had a fantasy that they were the kind of parents who built dollhouses. I begged them to build the dollhouse. I even promised to build it myself, but they wouldn’t let me. “We don’t have the right glue,” they said. It must have been a relief when they finally dropped it off at Goodwill and made it some other parent’s problem.

My real parents never came for me. I had to rescue myself, and eventually I did. I built my own dollhouse.

There were other fantasies. As far back as elementary school, I fantasized about being a sex worker. This would not surprise any astrologer who looked at my natal chart and saw my Venus in Scorpio. Venus rules money, and Scorpio rules the genitals

It was the early 90s, and my father was the fire station’s conduit for Playboy Magazine. When the bus dropped me off after school, I pulled black plastic envelopes from the mailbox in full view of the driver and the other children.

Did I flip through each new issue of Playboy?

Yes. Very much.

Should I have had free access to pornography before I even started middle school?

No. Very much.

You can understand why I was convinced that I had been kidnapped by two mentally unwell people.

The first time I ever saw a naked lady in the glossy, cologne-scented pages of Playboy, I knew immediately that I wanted to be that. I, too, wanted skin shiny with baby oil and bronzed as a succulent Thanksgiving turkey. I, too, wanted my hair to be curled and teased until it was bigger than God.

Flipping through the pages of a Playboy was like walking into Solomon’s Temple in ancient times and peeping the Holy of Holies. I gawked at the unbridled power of carnal flesh and form that bordered on culinary. These weren’t naked women to me. They were Goddesses. I couldn’t wait to grow up so that I could become one of them.

What is sex? I didn’t know. Playboy was not helpful in that regard. At some point I figured out what sex was, and I rejoiced to start high school. Finally, finally I would get to do this sex thing.

Except I didn’t.

No one would date me, despite my standards being very low. Maybe it had something to do with my father’s notorious arsenal of military-grade rifles kept locked and loaded in the coat closet.

But don’t worry. I had sex eventually, in college, a few times with different people. Through these interactions, a realization slowly dawned on me.

This—this—is sex? That’s it?

Oh, I realized. All those sex scenes in movies, all my friends who gushed about getting laid—they were all faking it! I concluded. People don’t really enjoy sex! How could they?!

It was a few decades later I started to suspect…maybe people aren’t faking it. Maybe people actually enjoy sex? Maybe something is wrong with me.

A genetic test revealed that I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. So…you’re telling me everyone’s tissue is as fragile as crepe paper? Not everyone’s hip joints dislocate during intimacy? Not everyone feels sensory overload and disassociates even in the best of situations?

Huh.

Yet, still, I fantasize about being a sex worker. The mind writes checks the body can’t cash. But maybe in another timeline, another dimension, there is another me with a sturdier body, bronzed and oiled as a turkey, living my fantasy.

Rhythms (April 2026)

Rhythms

If you really know me, you know I love to cry. Tears are a
testimony to the well inside me that swells simultaneously
with wonder and outrage, grief and gratitude. My tears are
both resistance and reconciliation. I cry often because I
love so hard.

If you really know me, you know I am loyal and fierce and
sometimes it might not be easy to be loved by me. Once I
see you, I won’t avert my gaze. Any self-denial you claim
will be naked to my knowing and the truth will gently
confront you every time you look into my eyes.

If you really know me, you know I experience the world in
images and song lyrics and that I am more at home
outside than in. I place my feet on a leaf-strewn forest path
or walk the timeless way of a creek bed and the brilliance
of being wildly alive inhabits my body with awe and relief
and gratitude. Birdsong chirps in the early morning
darkness as black night fills with diffused sunlight, tinting
the sky the blackest of blues and I feel the pulse in my
body; sky and earth and creature, and I know I am loved.

If you really know me, you know that my heart breaks all
the time, so I require great courage and resilience to tend
the faultlines with vigilance. I cannot remember a time
when my heart didn’t pulse with sorrow as well as wonder.
My child self knew sadness and joy in alarming extremes
and the fissures of being misunderstood and told to be
different than I was, whether in direct words or casual rejection or careless dismissal, reside in my heart’s
earliest cracks. I mended and stood vigil over those deep
crevices and protected myself, shielding against rejection.
I concealed my hurt and longing, crouched low in the dark
recesses of my own heart, hidden from those who couldn’t
really see me, didn’t understand me, wouldn’t love me.
But so far from the light, they atrophied and hardened and
my bullied heart parts rebelled in a solid, unyielding mass
of self-rejection, self-abandonment.

If you really know me, you know I’ve spent my life trying to
match my rhythm to those around me. I’ve been a
reluctantly reliable, if rebellious, foot soldier in the grand
scheme, stepping out of time to that soul-less beat of the
drum of conformity, mouthing the words to a false anthem.
There was no belonging, just an absence of me. I’ve
always known the price was too high, and I have warred
with myself in quiet revolution most of the time.
There have been moments of beautiful harmony-that
golden time when my children were small and our whole
world pulsed the natural rhythms of grace. Precious
friendships rooted in soul-deep recognition, our heartbeats
effortlessly syncopated; the sacred melody of my sisters
that pulses in our veins with a shared ancient song. I have
known truly aligned years when I was exactly where I was
meant to be and I have felt genuine purpose and peace and love. Come what may, I always love big and offer my
one true gift: my presence, my time, me.

But this human experience is a baptism of grief and
gratitude, and so often I gave in to fear. Fear that the voice
of my soul’s longing meant something was wrong with me,
that I was unlovable, that I was selfish. Fear that asserting
my individual voice would disrupt the song and then
everyone would see the heart of me. Fear that honoring
myself meant taking something from someone else.
Part of my journey now is accepting my own complicity in
the silent treason against my heartbeat in the name of
safety, belonging, and love. I did it. I acquiesced and
played so many parts. I believed the lies and even when I
really didn’t, I manipulated myself into believing them. It’s
a refrain common to women everywhere, scarred into our
memories by conditioning and ancestral trauma that
insists “Your value is in how you serve, what you
contribute; in how well your loved ones thrive, in how you
make others feel.” My natural rhythms fell into cadences
that were prescribed by others. I struggled to keep time,
discordant within. I imagine it is like a hummingbird
attempting to stand like the heron or soar like an eagle.
Exhausting.

Rage, hopelessness, sadness and exhaustion all braided
together in a chord tethering me even as it coiled
dangerously, threatening to tighten and cut me off at my breath. I felt forever misunderstood, utterly unknown and
lonely even in a crowded room. I became hypervigilant,
fiercely independent, and made sure I was above
reproach. I have always had one foot out the door, quick to
release relationships, walk away from conflict, carrying my
home inside myself, tied to no place, avoiding the
inevitable gaslighting, shaming, and other manipulations
that have been leveraged against me when I dared be true
to myself or set a boundary. I’d learned to anticipate the
energy that asked more of me than I had to give, needed
something from me that I was not, and I’d escape. And
always in the aftermath, I would blame myself for being
too much or not enough, golden veins of self-deception,
scars of shame mapping a lifetime of taking sides against
myself.

I am grateful for the resilience of the human heart, and
what I have found to be irrevocably true is that even when
our rhythm is absorbed into an ocean of noise, our once-
in-this-lifetime soul music is never lost. It echoes
endlessly and will always resurface, even when we
intentionally attempt to drown it. Constant as starshine
and ocean tide and the rotation of the planet, it is always
there, beneath the skin, returning to itself like waves
washing the shore and clouds loosing the rain.
Here, on the other side of 50 with three grown children, a
high schooler, a middle schooler, and a menopausal middle, I grab healing with both hands and submerge
myself in it. I’ve pried off the decades weighing down the
song of my soul. Now, I walk for hours through woods and
dunes, along rivers and through rolling hills smothered in
purple Lupines and golden Balsamroot. When I round the
familiar bend that leads to the majestic trees with their
outstretched hands, fingers rooted and cascading down
the path, a gentle stairway of mossy knuckles and limbs, I
just want to say thank you. They remind me that I can
stand strong, grow, receive, shelter and thrive, come what
may. I dance wildly on a stretch of beach, curious seabirds
my unwitting audience. I pause to watch the heron, still
and completely useless to the powers of oppression.
Solitary in her self-reliance, stalwart in her quiet waiting,
no energy wasted, acting with precision born of tireless
observation, confident to move when opportunity presents
itself like a frog emerging from the muck. She teaches me
that waiting is not inaction; waiting is wisdom. No rushing
in to calm the chaos or save anyone. These days, I can
sit and do nothing but watch the heron for hours, lakeside
as the golden sun slants low across the water. When I am
overcome with weariness of a world that is not as it should
be, a life less lovely than it could be, he reminds me that I
am connected to something far greater than the dailiness
of this life. I breathe; my heart beats. I breathe; I stay. I
breathe: I love myself.

This decision to stay with myself has necessitated a
willingness to fight. Resilience and courage and love
compel me to welcome the conflict, the discomfort, the
discordant clashing of honesty. With determination, I claim
out loud that compromise doesn’t mean I always give in.
With tears of triumph, I own the right to trust my knowing
more than prioritizing someone else’s comfort. With my
heart in my hands, I love myself enough to say “NO” and
risk losing perceived affection or validation. With a clear
and strong voice, I refuse to accept responsibility for that
which is not mine. Maybe the hardest fight of all is
admitting that I might be the villain in someone else’s
story. I accept that if being genuine and operating out of
my personal integrity unintentionally causes perceived
harm, I am accountable. I make repair as best I can. I
remember that it is okay to set boundaries and refuse to
cause myself harm in the name of serving others. This is
how I love myself.

Waves of life wash over me, sometimes crashing. But my
hands aren’t gripping into the sand desperately grasping
for some anchor, my arms aren’t flailing wildly to stay
above the surf. I am learning to allow, to surrender, to be
taken with the tide and returned, or not. This washing and
rinsing is a different baptism, of breath and truth and
sovereignty. Every love song is now an anthem to me, asking and granting absolution. This, too, is how I love
myself.

If you really know me-- when you really know me--you will
recognize my singular rhythm, and my everlasting echo of

Rhythms

I’ll start with a poem of sorts. It doesn’t have a title.

Sound

Rise, Fall

Mom, girl, god

North , South , East, West

Five fingers five toes

Wave

Up down

Stop

in -out

Move

Back front

Hell Earth Sky

Two legs two arms

Head between shoulders

Flow

Push pull

Pause

Again

1-2-3–4-5, 1,2, 1,2

1-2–4,5—, 1,2 1,2

This is a count from the song I am dancing to at an upcoming event. The song is called Baleen Morning by Balmorea, and the dance number is called Six of Cups. In tarot, the six of cups is an image that might make your eyes water, evoking nostalgia for the sweetness of childhood memories. Dancing to this count, this song, and this image has been the perfect doorway into exploring the theme of rhythm.

What is a rhythm? It’s a repeating vibrational pattern. It could be a repeating sound pattern or a repeated movement. It could be found in a heartbeat, within a song, on a number line, or in the tide pushing in and falling back out. Do I have rhythm? My heart beats. I breathe in and out. As I drive over the bridge into Warrenton, I notice when the tide is low enough, to reveal the crevices covered in a filmy sheen on the river floor. I notice when the giant ships are angled like short hands on an old-fashioned clock. I notice when the full moon reflects off the bay's surface. I notice the pattern of my own moon cycle, marking it on my wall calendar, bleeding in reference to the celestial rock-clock in the sky. The same still and quiet moon-clock that refills the bay to sea level, sloshing water near the brim of the road bridge. The bay could be thought of as a cup or chalice, filling and emptying. The contents of a cup are not meant to remain stagnant or overflow, perhaps teaching us something valuable about ourselves and our memories. I didn’t always notice these celestial and terrestrial rhythms inside me and outside of me. I didn’t always notice the patterns in this cosmic symphony we have the great privilege of experiencing. I know, especially in times of confusion and pain, it doesn’t feel like a privilege to be here.

Personally, I do not have a sweet sense of nostalgia when reflecting on my childhood. Growing up, the person who was supposed to be fulfilling the role of the father and protector was very unwell. He hid his sickness from the outside world, taking it out on me. He was a very popular teacher and coach, who, behind closed doors, inflicted violence upon me as an innocent young child. He acted saintly in public, creating great dissonance within my body-mind. Before being able to form sentences, the rhythms of my own being were disrupted, defiled, degraded, and debased.

The abuse caused me to lose consciousness, first as a child and then as an adult. I didn’t remember any of it until just over seven years ago. Blocking it out must have helped me survive, but it also left me only half-awake, half-alive - mostly just surviving in an asynchronous world, where what is said does not match up with what is real. When the dam of my subconscious broke open from within my body, the community surrounding me at the time only amplified the overwhelm, confusion, and incongruity. They turned away from me and the truth to maintain the facade of normal. This is one of the ways I witnessed how our society unconsciously aids and abets. They would have much preferred that I never spoke the truth, and that I disappear. Now I am in a different place, a different vibrational plane of existence, and part of a different community. I am here, un-disappearing myself - working to free myself from old patterns that disconnect me from my own rhythms and from life.

Something else interesting I noticed about rhythms. For a rhythm to exist, there needs to be time and silence or stillness between movements. This silent or still period between movements throughout my early adult life involved blacking out, a pattern that repeated, first as a child to escape the horror of abuse and then as an adult to escape the chronic patterns of pain and self-destruction left over from it. I drank myself into oblivion, for good reason, even though, having blocked it out, I didn’t know the reason. My body remembered, but I didn't know how to listen to it, and without knowing the truth, it became the enemy. Now, I know the truth, the truth is my body is not, and never was, the problem. Hidden abuse was the problem. Knowing the truth, I have been able to get away from people who hurt me and turn back, lovingly, toward myself.

The truth is, the universe has rhythm. Cycles within cycles, repeating patterns, contractions, and expansions like the breath, tide, and heartbeat. I have a growing obsession with rhythms. Noticing them within me and outside of me, synchronizing, harmonizing, resonating. This is one of the ways I am returning to myself and turning towards life.

Most recently, I have started to learn to dance. It isn’t easy. As a child, I barely had music in my life. The person who was supposed to be my father preferred silence and turned the big silver knob of the radio off when he got home. There were a few dances in my hometown. I grew up in a farm town just over the mountain, and the owners of the big local nursery held a barn dance every year. I remember smelling burgers on the grill, the fizzy crack of a can of 7-Up opening, and the feeling of my chicken legs getting scratched up as I crawled up the mountain of hay bales. I think there was a live band, but I don't remember what it sounded like, and I don’t remember dancing. There were also school dances. I remember the musty, darkened elementary school gym, where I slow-danced for the first time to Boys to Men. I also learned the boot-scoot, a line dance, in PE at the same stinky, windowless gym. Otherwise, there was no music or dancing in our house.

I was not able to listen to or feel my own rhythms. I had no way to know how to follow my unique inner sheet of music. Not being in touch with my own sacred rhythms, I became lost for a very long count, but now that count is over, and I am finding my way back to myself.

1-2–3,4,5 -1-2. The count we dance to. I can hear it, I can kind of sing it, but I can’t yet fully put it together with my body's movement and the music. I still have time to practice and sync up. I have the whole rest of my life to practice. And how freeing it is when we can forget the count and just dance! This dance of returning to myself is sacred to me. Instead of being alone and drinking myself into oblivion, now I am here with you all, feeling everything, and dancing myself into oblivion. I am giving myself the childhood experiences I never had, pouring love toward the little girl who never got a chance to dance, and all the other children who never got the chance either. From now on, when I draw the six of cups from the tarot, I imagine my eyes will get a little watery as I feel the sweetness of childhood nostalgia that this particular dance has gifted me.

So even though it isn’t always easy, it is a privilege to be here. We are lucky to live near the river mouth, where, everywhere we look, we are reminded of the tides' swelling and retreating. We are lucky to live here, where in early spring, when the daffodils are blooming, the American Pelicans return, flapping their giant prehistoric wings, before landing to rest in the bay. It is a miracle to be living here where the fingers tap the keyboards, and the sun sets on the water as it laps up against the coffee shop, and the eagles circle above women dancing to 1, 2, 3– 4, 5, 1, 2 , 12.

Planting Seeds (March 2026)

Coming soon...

Borders (February 2026)

Coming soon...

Mending (January 2026)

Women Who Write To Heal, January 2026

Theme: Mending

I have had a long time to think about the theme of “Mending”. The theme was suggested to us by a wise woman in our community who sews things. She knows something about life, needles and thread, and how to fix damaged things.

I had so much time to think, and there are always plenty of things in need of repair, both in the sock drawer and in the psyche, but the inspiration wasn’t coming. Perhaps because I was recently struck by Cupid’s arrow, and through the eyes of new love, the world appeared miraculously whole. As a writer, this was problematic.

The fateful cupid strike came after many years of avoiding romance as if it were the plague. I thought that by hiding in my house, I could avoid love, but apparently Cupid is very sneaky and can arrive via a Craigslist ad I posted to find a new housemate. My ad was very specific and stated: no drinking, no smoking, no cooking meat, quiet after 8 pm, and, most importantly, 'don’t talk to me too much’. I closed the ad with. It could be a great fit for a traveling nurse, or female retiree, or maybe a monk.

I didn’t expect to have many takers.

To my surprise, almost immediately, an email popped up in my inbox. It said, “I’m just looking for a place to crash during the week while I take a class at the college. I won’t be a bother.” Hmm, that sounded okay.

When a middle-aged man showed up to see the room, I never suspected Cupid’s arrows would be hiding in the back pocket of his overalls. Why I agreed to rent the guest room to him, I can not explain. I always knew I would be happy to rent to a woman in crisis, but this other type of human, the type with cowboy boots, and cast-iron pans? How strange it was to type the words, “I have decided it will be fine if you want to rent the room for the month, and then we can go from there”. Even more strange was the grin on my face when he agreed to move in. " What is the Wi-Fi password?" he asked. FlickerFeather, I answered. Northern Flickers are my spirit animal, he responded.

As many of you know, several years ago, I experienced an awakening to severe buried childhood trauma. Since then, I often comment on how I can’t feel my heart. My heart was beyond broken. The space where my heart had once been was either empty or unreachable. I have done a lot of healing, but my heart space has remained numb. Romance with another human was the last thing I wanted. I was very content living with a dead heart, in a house full of live plants.

But when this man arrived, it was as if he had come to say, “Your heart isn’t dead! It’s just curled up in a tiny shell that's gotten too small. It’s time to bust that shell up and unfurl.”

One morning, at sunrise, when the hummingbirds were buzzing around in the soft pink light of the breaking day, he read me a poem. Tears came to both our eyes, and he gave me a feather of a Northern Flicker, which I put on my altar.

And it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. We are both small-town kids who come from nothing. We were doing our best to wake up and heal in society that offers so little to help.

Have you ever heard of Parts therapy? This is where you start to become aware of the different aspects of yourself that have split off and become their own personalities. This helps you survive the unsurvivable. You have protector parts, wounded parts, and critical parts. And if you had it really bad when you were young, you have some additional quirky characters, like the circus clown part or the fortune-teller part, which add some additional flair. Falling in love while waking up in midlife is like two traveling circus acts colliding under one big top. Learning to live with and love every angry tiger, mischievous monkey, and perimenopausal bearded lady is a challenge that requires patience and a sense of humor, which we both had just enough of, or at least it seemed.

Even amidst the chaos of being messy humans, oh, how sweet it is to fall in love. Stormy days, cuddled up by the fire. Fresh flowers, love notes, and home-cooked meals. Suddenly, my tiny, dull gray snail heart began to buzz. I could feel it pressing up against its too-small shell. It was as if the heavens were dancing and the animal kingdom cheering as we became dear friends and then friends who frequently rested our heads on one another's shoulders. And the things love can do! Love acts as a filter, turning every physical flaw into a work of art. Love smooths over rough edges and melts walls. Love laughs, and cries happy tears, and spills out to everyone around you. Even the hummingbirds became more cheerful, feeding right out of our hands. Love does other strange things. It autocorrects the words of your lover so that you don’t hear “I wonder if I did enough to save my marriage” and “It would be so much easier to go back to my old life”. You don’t hear these words.

And in this way, the tiny shell around my heart began to crack, and the space around it started to grow. There was a bit of kicking and screaming from the snail-heart because it can be pretty scary to inhabit new space. There is always the risk of fresh pain.

And so that morning, when he told me that he was going to give his marriage another chance, I was not prepared. The words were like a fist through my chest. One sweeping, fatal blow, and the honey-sweet romance was over, leaving me curled up in a ball of tears.

All of the healing I had done didn’t make this fresh heartache any easier. In fact, in some ways, it hurt worse. I could feel everything and numbing isn't an option anymore. Furthermore, unlike in previous relationships, this had been a person I actually enjoyed talking to and spending my days with. It was the loss of his presence that ached. As the shock wore off, tears poured out. And then, naturally, anger rose.

I thought back to when Marianne Monson read aloud, right here at Sleeper, about a breakup she had experienced. Marianne has a much more “robust lexicon” than I, and it was the classiest rage-rant spell-casting cathartic ex-lover curse I had ever heard. I wonder if I could beat it?

With the love chemicals wearing off, I could now concentrate on magnifying all of those flaws I had so lovingly embraced.

I stared out my upstairs window at Youngs Bay toward Saddle Mountain. I let the anger rise, inviting the words to drop down from my brain and meet and mingle with the rage rising up in my mouth

What a freaking idiot…I say to nobody

It was no Pulitzer prize-winning insult, but it felt pretty good. I knew I could do better.

I started thinking of some clever and nasty things I could say. Insults mean enough to make him cry. The anger rose up in me when, suddenly, a Northern Flicker appeared just outside the window, in an impossible perch under the ledge of the second-floor window.

The anger resided, and when it did, my aching heart softened. Everything was quiet. All that was left was this new love.

How will I ever mend my broken heart?

I went downstairs, opened my laptop, and started writing.