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I felt a flash of hope for you, even though I knew — because of the distant and resigned tone of your voice — that you were going to die soon.
By John Paul ScottoApril 2022I didn’t know whether Grandpa knew that I knew. “My dad told me,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Grandpa got misty, then nodded and said, “He’d had enough.” To this day I believe this is the most empathetic way to understand suicide.
By John FrankMarch 2022I have bipolar II disorder, which is characterized by rock-bottom lows interspersed with occasional bouts of manic hyperactivity. After some tweaking of my antidepressant cocktail, this maelstrom, too, will pass. I just have to lash myself to the mast and wait.
By Kathleen FoundsFebruary 2022I wondered if I had stumbled upon some universal principle: the more beautiful the illusion, the more egregious the lie.
By Sam RuddickFebruary 2022Smoking in the girls’ room, sneaking a drink, napping
By Our ReadersDecember 2021My granddaughter barely speaks. Her name is Effie, which in Greek means “well-spoken.” Maybe in Greece she would be. Names aren’t expected to match the person. If they were, we’d be named upon our death, when someone would have a stab in the dark at getting it right.
By Douglas SilverDecember 2021November 2021Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. . . . I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.
Rachel Naomi Remen
The most dangerous weapons of war in the twenty-first century are not bullets and bombs; they are the weaponization of this rage, mistrust, alienation, and other tangles of trauma, which make all forms of violence more likely.
By Leslee GoodmanNovember 2021On our way back from a Mother’s Day celebration in Newport Beach / my sister turned to me & said, Have you ever thought about treatment for your / eating disorder? For years the only eating disorder in the house was hers.
By Jeremy RadinOctober 2021The selection that follows — just a small sample of the fifty-plus poems of his that have appeared in The Sun — display the heart and honesty that first drew us to Chris’s work in 1977. A self-described “compulsive writer,” Chris once said, “I do not wait for inspiration. . . . Some days I watch the page until a few words come — and then I find myself inside the world they invite me into.” That world will be missed.
By Chris BurskSeptember 2021Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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