Category: Roots & Remnants
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Some habits leave evidence. Mine lived on my skin. The Arms I Kept Covered In middle school and high school, I picked at my arms relentlessly. With focus. With repetition. With the kind of precision anxiety teaches over time. Part of it had a name: keratosis pilaris.Keratosis pilaris is a common, harmless skin condition where…
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On tornadoes, third grade, and fear that never quite expires I was in third grade when a storm rewired my nervous system. It wasn’t dramatic in the way disasters look in movies. There was no slow-motion debris or heroic music. Just confusion. Noise. Adults yelling when they were supposed to be calm. That’s the part…
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Proof that theatre wasn’t the only place I experimented with identity We’ve already covered theatre pretty thoroughly, so this might surprise you, but I didn’t put all my eggs in one dramatic basket. I dipped my toe into other activities too. Briefly. Casually. Sometimes successfully. Sometimes just long enough to realize, ah, this is not…
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The Gospel According to Lzzy Hale, Patron Saint of Badass Rock Girls Everywhere There are bands you like.Bands you blast.And then there are bands that crawl into your bloodstream and rewire your entire definition of “powerhouse.” For me, that band has always been Halestorm. I am a sucker for any female-led rock group — give…
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How Animal Crossing Kept Me Sane Through a Global Meltdown I’ve been playing Animal Crossing since the GameCube era—back when villagers still threw unfiltered shade and Tom Nook ran what can only be described as a full-on capitalist cult disguised as a mortgage system. It’s easily in my top five favorite games. No contest. So…
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A quiet reckoning after the world went still There are moments when a realization doesn’t arrive loudly. It doesn’t announce itself or demand attention. It settles in instead—heavy, unavoidable—until you’re forced to look at it directly. I didn’t live my way through my late twenties. Those years didn’t unfold so much as they disappeared. Somewhere…
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Evanescence: The Band That Raised My Inner Emo 🌒 The Beginning: When the EvTrain Rolled Into My Universe My initiation into Evanescence wasn’t graceful or sacred—just my neighbor shoving “Bring Me to Life” at me like it was contraband. (Jamie still swears she was the one who did it, and honestly? They can arm-wrestle about…
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Childhood Pneumonia, Hospital Hallways, and the Season That Rewired My Life When I was ten, I caught the flu that was sweeping through Michigan that winter—one of those “everyone has it” strains from 2003 (something like the Venetian flu, if memory serves). Mom took me to the pediatrician, where I picked up pneumonia right there…
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Why 5th grade was both the best and the worst year of my life Some years teach you facts.Some years teach you who you are. Fifth grade did both—loudly, theatrically, and with a little emotional whiplash for balance. We Didn’t Just Learn—We Immersed My fifth-grade teacher didn’t teach the curriculum. She built worlds and dropped…