Bearing My "Testimony"
These things that I'm writing about, I feel strongly about them.
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On Earthquakes, Essays, Publications, and Podcasts (and Missing California Me)
Trading spaces with the version of myself that refused to follow my then-fiance-now-spouse and his new job back to Utah—a version of myself who moved to LA instead to haunt open mics and write and find a way to survive while applying to grad schools—is a fantasy I dwell on about as much as I do the one in which I moved back East on a lacrosse scholarship after high school and discovered my atheism and bisexuality much sooner than I finally would.
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“You’d Make a Good Bishop’s Wife”: When a Compliment Starts Sounding Like an Insult in Hindsight
A bishop’s wife (a bishop is always married, and to a woman) is held to a certain standard by association. Her role is to support her husband not just with her willingness to come second after the congregation, but by demonstrating to the other women in their ward what it means to be an exemplary “helpmeet.”
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On Weirdness and Play: Or an Ode to the Creative Haven That Was My Uncle’s House
I stared up at my second grade teacher with a probably drifting eye, probably long tangled brown hair, maybe even wearing the XXL shirt with the giant printed cow on the front I loved so much around this time. And the way she responded to me has never left my brain in thirty years.
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In Which I Explain to My Goddaughter (and Myself) What It Means to Have (and Be) a Godmother
When close friends asked my partner and I to be godparents to their daughter, the four of us got to decide what the relationship would mean to us.
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[My Upanishad] Something I Wrote in a Class I Almost Didn’t Take Because It Was Called Lit of the Sacred
Years ago I signed up for a class at Utah Valley University called “Literature of the Sacred,” specifically because my first instinct was to dismiss it. I reconsidered. This wasn’t BYU, after all, and the course description didn’t read like Seminary or Institute (the school-adjacent religious courses I attended as a high school student and during my first semester as an undergrad back in the early 00s). Maybe this class would help cleanse the bitterness mormonism had left on my tongue for words like “sacred,” “faith,” and “prayer.” Maybe it would be a good companion course to the work I was doing in therapy. I thought of all my classes…
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A Eulogy for My Grandpa
This is a version of the eulogy I wrote for my mom's dad this past year. I read this to my relatives during his graveside service. It includes excerpts from journals he wrote during the LDS mission he served in 1951, which is where he met my grandma. I didn't read this exact version at his graveside though. The eulogy I actually read was edited to remove superfluous details about my personal life and experiences. Those I'll share here, on my personal blog.
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Personal Progress Stories: “My Journey is Not About Me Leaving; It’s About Me Finding”
Guest Post: I have a firm belief that each person needs to find what makes them happy and run with it. I have found what makes me happy and wish that upon everyone on this earth.
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To the Woman Who Kicked My Dog: How Did Your Easter Fast Go?
I accidentally broke a glass before filling it with a cold water infusion of violet and yarrow, and didn’t realize it until I was already drinking from it in the dark, invoking the cosmos for respite from conflict, illness, from cruel people, from fear and the chemistry of my brain, from the pitfalls of my past and the inevitability of future mistake.
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On Trauma and Triggers: Changing Routes and Running with Mace
In the past two years, I’ve changed my running route four times. Each time was to avoid a memory, and my border collie and I collect those like burrs.
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“It’s Not You, It’s Me”: How I Embrace My Demisexuality and Define It For Others
Throughout my life I keep finding myself in the gray areas of everything, and there’s safety in liminality, privilege in ambiguity. For example, people usually don’t know where to place me racially when they look at me and even my claimed bi- and demisexuality put me in a position to simply disappear into heteronormative constructs in ways many queer folk can’t. I feel that this puts impetus on my role as an ally, a role which I want to justly fill.
