Published inWhat We Inherit·Nov 4, 2022Member-onlyOn love, part 2“Why are you choosing violence today?”, is a phrase I frequently sang-uttered to myself last winter. Sitting in the car, fingers ice cold, my father growling about something in the passenger seat, the traffic lights somehow even longer at 6.20AM. In the last months of his life, my father struggled…Generational Trauma5 min readGenerational Trauma5 min read
Apr 13, 2020Member-onlyYour new relationship with timeI have never, in my life, heard so much talk about washing dishes. When we could still roam free, the answer to “how was your day?” tended to be light on the details. Unless there was drama to unpack, a new idea to explore or a discovery to share, the…Quarantine4 min readQuarantine4 min read
Published inHuman Parts·Jan 3, 2020Member-onlyI’m the Only One in My Family Who Can’t See GhostsAs the youngest in a family of witches, I interpret the world my own way — I call it “spook.” To get technical, spook is a sixth sense, but they don’t treat it with any kind of reverence. It’s not special. To hear them talk about it, spook is as unremarkable as a lazy eye or the state of your digestion. It’s just part of who…Family5 min readFamily5 min read
Published inWhat We Inherit·Oct 20, 2019On loveIf you learn your first lessons about love from your parents, then my first lesson was that it was a burden. An unwieldy thing that someone was always asking you to carry, making as if it were a gift, one that you had not asked for, but that you had…Family4 min readFamily4 min read
Oct 8, 20192019: The year I didn’tTo all appearances, I have had a busy but unremarkable year. The last nine months have rolled along like so many before. I delivered work on my accounts, spent two weeks wandering another country while contemplating time, space and my passage through it, ate nice dinners, took long walks, drank…Life Lessons3 min readLife Lessons3 min read
Jul 12, 2019LongingIt was sparked in 1998. That spring, I backpacked around England, Ireland and Scotland with a friend and then took a connecting flight to Rome on my own. Previously, I had only visited Italy with my parents, as a family. And weeks before this trip, I had officially broken up…Italy4 min readItaly4 min read
Published inWhat We Inherit·Dec 30, 2018On beautyWhen I was a child, I didn’t understand that my mother was a beauty. I only saw her eyes, perpetually dark with fatigue, only heard her voice, tense, barking out my name. Every day, I felt her annoyance with me, her dissatisfaction with what I did, what I didn’t do. …Short Story6 min readShort Story6 min read
Nov 5, 2018Member-onlyBend, compromise, try not to breakA feeling slams into me every now and again. Usually when I am walking home from the office on a Friday evening, my arms and shoulders heavy with bags toting the week’s detritus of rinsed lunch containers, shoes, damp yoga clothes. notebooks. “Forever schlepping”, I think. No different than my…Family6 min readFamily6 min read
Oct 4, 2018GuiltSo that thing about Italian mothers and guilt is true. If you understand anything about Catholicism, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. When you are made to believe that your every move, your every word, is being recorded by an unseen power that will determine your fate, guilt is your…Family4 min readFamily4 min read
Aug 28, 2018Your name is a signMy name, the syllables that I have known the longest, other than mama, speaks of my yearning every day. If nomen est omen — if the name is the sign — then my name is a tightly knit tapestry of who I am, what I love and where I come…Ancestry3 min readAncestry3 min read
