"Get out of the front yard! The neighbors can see you!" my mom would scream at me as I ran through the sprinklers, topless and barefoot, during the summer months of my youth. I was always doing something to embarrass the family in front of the neighbors. From running around with Fruit Roll-Up

In all my wildest imaginings of where I would find "home," I never envisioned myself in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nonetheless, this is the place I have chosen to call my home and community.I've lived many places throughout my life, mostly in the Northern states. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. As a

Fathers, dads, papas — whatever you call them, they all have a special ability to lift you up with their support and love or crush your very being through either intended or unintended cruelness. Or at least that is how I imagine it to be. Because how would I know? My father technically left when I

I never wanted kids. They always struck me as tiny little bombs with perpetually runny noses and mysteriously sticky hands. I couldn't imagine loving a child of my own, never mind someone else's. My aversion to parenthood is the very reason I entered into a relationship with a young father so

“We need to have a family meeting.” A what? We were not a family-meeting type of family. We didn’t have long sessions where we talked about our feelings or our days. I was home on break during my first year of college and just wanted to count down the minutes until I was back in my dorm,