I didn’t need a diagnosis to find healing, but it sure would have helped. We can’t wait on the DSM-5 to improve access to care for C-PTSD. — Content warning: rape The American Psychiatric Association (APA) released an article on December 28, 2021, announcing that an update to the DSM-5, the DSM-5 TR (text revisions), will be released in March 2022. As someone with a condition that is recognized by many mental health professionals, yet has not been…

Revisiting ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ — CW: mention of past trauma (sexual assault) I decided to watch The Perks of Being a Wallflower (the 2012 film) on a crisp May night in the “pandemic year” 2020, and I remember it was a full moon because a wicked retrograde season was just kicking off, giving the barrage…

Coming back to Nickelodeon in my 30s — I was a sensitive Gen Y kid to begin with. (We didn’t have the word “Millennial” back in the early ‘90s.) You could say I was “melodramatic” or “impressionable.” These were some of the stories I was told about myself: I needed to start preschool early because I kept trying…

Do you have one of those blessings that feels more like a curse? The curly hair that just won’t behave. The amazing long legs that require custom-tailored jeans because nobody makes your size. I’ll tell you mine: I’ll get really emotionally worked up to the point of crying, and the…

The first time I saw The Sixth Sense, I felt very lied to. I probably watched it around 2016–2017 during a stint when I decided I was going to feel out my threshold for cinematic fear, starting with basic slumber party thrillers and then moving up through the classics to…

Like many readers, I’ve always associated summer with the novel: juicy storytelling that meanders and keeps me spellbound for hours at a time. Every year, the quest is for “the perfect beach read” — but this summer I don’t want to get away. It’s been a whole year since I…

blud Rachel McKibbens Copper Canyon Press, 2017 Amazon I first encountered Rachel McKibbens speaking at an AWP panel on “Poetry as Invocation” with Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Airea D. Matthews, Ada Limón, and Casey Rochteau. The poets read their work and discussed “the poetic impulses of women as a magical or quasi-magical…

Kelsey Hoff The story proper begins with flaming eviction notices descending ominously, beautifully, out of East Village tenement windows as their residents belt out their defiance in the language of rock ‘n roll: “We’re not gonna pay last year’s rent.” I’m sucked in by the familiarity of this scene of…