Former Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer.
Tag: Life
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“Being a queer girl isn’t something you decide. It’s something you survive, until you get old enough to claim it.”—Emily Pratt Slatin There are days—quiet, ordinary, well-behaved days—when everything is working just as it should. But somewhere in the periphery, somewhere behind the steady cadence of utility and discipline, something far more primitive stirs: the…
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I went down to the river today because I needed to remember who I am. Not the version people expect. Not the one who always has the answer or the fuse already lit. Just me. Alone with the trees and the current and the kind of silence you can’t get when other people are around…
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I sent a simple email to my neighbors. Just a courteous heads-up that I’d have a few friends visiting the farm overnight. In a rural stretch of Vermont, where each house is a good tractor’s ride away, it felt right to let them know about the extra car in my drive and the voices that…
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This afternoon, the breeze rolled in like it had somewhere to be. I sat on the porch and let it comb through my hair like the fingers of someone who knows better than to ask questions. It’s sticky out—just enough to remind me it’s June—but I’d still take this over air conditioning. I want to feel the…
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I’m out on the porch when the call comes through. The local tractor dealership is on the line, letting me know that my new mower deck—a long-awaited upgrade—is being assembled and will be delivered in the next couple of days. I thank them by name, because by now they answer with Hey Emily, as if…
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When I was little, I used to imagine myself barefoot and wild, running through fields that never ended—thick with tall grass and wildflowers, the air alive with monarch butterflies swarming around me like they knew I belonged there. In those dreams the sky was a fearless blue, the sun gentle on my skin, and I…
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Life isn’t just lived, it is passed down like a well-loved leather diary—full of scribbled notes, tear stains, and lipstick prints in the margins. We inherit it in pieces—half-truths, coded glances, fragments of letters never sent. The lipstick print on the margin says, “I loved once—recklessly, fully, with a laugh that echoed through motel hallways…
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I was raised by a father who tried to script every facet of my life. Each day was dictated by rules that my mother and I never agreed to. Having given up on trying to control my mother, he focused on me. He decided what I wore, what I could say, even what dreams I…
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As far back as I can remember, my childhood was haunted by a profound sense of fragility. While other kids were preoccupied with cartoons and playground games, I was grappling with questions of life, and death. I carried a storm inside me even as a little girl—a churning cloud of existential dread that lived under…
