essays

"We are standing side by side, and I am too young to know that things will change. That a day will come when you can no longer build and fix and instruct..."

Manifest Station, June 29, 2022

"I walk into the labyrinthian galleries of art hoping for respite but immediately I want leave. To get out of there and go see my daughter and take her home"

HerStry, June 28, 2022

"At a beach on Madeline Island, my son and daughter searched for skipping stones, flat and smooth, perfectly sized to fit their little hands."

Feminine Collective, March 14, 2022

“You know you want it.” No, I don’t want it, I wish I said, but didn’t, so “What’s wrong with you?” again.

Feminine Collective, August 31, 2021

"You can prove that you are ugly.

You have known this since you were a child."

Wanderlust Journal, August 3, 2021

"In the midst of a pandemic with international travel a distant dream, memories of past travels sustain me."

Grown and Flown, December 18, 2018

“At a Hippo Campus concert, I was reminded that buttercups make my daughter feel strong.”

Bethel Banner, September 2017

"'It will all work out,’ I told myself. But as our departure neared, I really wondered what I had signed myself up for.”

Bethel Banner, December 2015 and Chicken Soup: The Joy of Christmas, 2016

“…Christmastime loomed ahead of me not as a wonderful holiday but as an event that threatened to toss me over the edge.”

Bethel Banner, January 2015

“Back when I was a teenager, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what it meant to be a Christian … But as an adult, I really don’t know what to think anymore.”

Published in Minnesota Memories 6, Womeninc., August 2009 & the September 2008 issue of “The Tattler”, the newsletter of the Minnesota MG T Register car club.

Brake Stands is a story about burning rubber — and talking to Dad.

Read at Risking, a Northfield Arts Guild Writers’ Night, February 2006 and published in Minnesota Flyer, September 2006.

A story about learning to fly, facing challenges and a person who helped me find my wings.