Did she catch a glimpse of what was coming as she split open and pushed him with the strength of horses into this world? In that moment, when life and death and blood and air weave themselves together so inextricably, did she have any sense, then, that he was being pulled into the dark? Or […]
Finding My Way Back to the Beginning
by on February 12, 2018 8 Comments
By Stefanie Norlin | Twitter: @stefanienorlin The summer after fourth grade, my best friend Juliana and I decided to conduct an experiment. Standing on stools in my mother’s kitchen, we held cold eggs in one hand and punctured the tops and bottoms of them with a straight pin. Then we blew the yellow yolks into small Pyrex […]
Are You My Mother? (No, I’m Not)
by on September 27, 2016 31 Comments
There’s a story about Ernest Hemingway that goes like this: A local paper was running a competition for the saddest short story. Hemingway is said to have won with just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Can’t you just feel the ache of that? You can almost hear dreams shattering like glass. The […]
In Love’s Kitchen
by on March 9, 2015 28 Comments
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. – Mary Oliver I want the next line to read “Lord, let me have lived and loved dangerously.” I’m learning to love fear. I’m learning to be courageous […]
When the Fertility Fairy Goes MIA
by on April 16, 2014 43 Comments
“Are you going to have more kids?” I look at my only child, playing and grinning from ear to ear. God, I love him. I feel a stab in my heart as disappointment and grief flood in. I don’t want him to be alone in life. But his dad and I have been trying for […]
