I often felt fearful as a young girl. My parents struggled to provide for us, causing an air of tension in our home. But if I wanted...

Sadly, every beautiful story is entangled with a monster. The monsters that haunted my life and broke my sweet laughter were violators...

It was odd to me how my mother married a man who didn’t seem to understand either one of us. Our passion, empathy, and sensitivity...

I was born in 1987 and grew up in Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria with a younger sister and hard-working, loving parents who encouraged me...

I grew up feeling like an only child, as my siblings were much older. My relationship with my siblings was good, but I didn’t see them...

Quirky and awkward. That’s how most people saw me in middle school and high school. I was the big kid with clumsiness in his DNA...

This was the day I was born, miraculously, to a drug-addicted mother who couldn’t take care of me. I was born with fetal alcohol syndrome...

In 2008, my whole world imploded. Everything I thought was supposed to take place in my life, bar the details, was blown to smithereens...

I grew up in Arkansas in the 1970s, always searching for someone to love me like a father. My own passed away when I was just six months...

We’d break the rules, then run off and hide in the mango trees until the coast was clear–or so we thought. My mom would wait for us...

I always looked up to him, though I must admit I played the part of an annoying little sister perfectly. He teased me mercilessly—not...

My grandma remembers coming over and noticing how pale and sickly I looked as a baby. She would ask my mom, “Aren’t you going to feed her...

My dad worked at IBM as a programmer and was a protective, caring, and loving man. My mom was a professional pianist and the choir...

On hot summer nights, my parents would pack up a picnic and take my us to the beach by the lake. The cool water breeze off the lake was...

After trying to have a child for fifteen years with no success, my parents had grown desperate and immigrated from Britain to the state...

Though the city was tinged with gang violence, I roamed the neighborhoods without fear; a free-spirited soul I was. After playing outside...

When I was born, I was assigned male. I grew up in a conservative, Christian suburb of Chicago, Illinois in the 1970s. In those Triassic...

My younger brother was very naughty, and while my other siblings and I were in the kitchen, we watched him drink all the coffee and then...

My parents fought throughout my whole childhood. The very first memory I have is sitting in a car seat by the front door while my parents...

It’s hard to close the doors to the past. Though sometimes, it is necessary to move on, because that closed door often opens another...