Writer’s Block

My deadline looms before me, but I have nothing to offer. Not a word. I know all I need to do is start writing, and before long, I’ll be finished, but sometimes starting seems impossibly difficult. I turn my attention from the window I’ve been gazing through to my laptop, open a new document, and…

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On Writing Myself Alive

First, I wrote Leyla. She was a teen I thought my own teen girls might like. Leyla was for them. A Turkish girl, wandering the old city, who falls into an epic adventure to uncover a secret passed among women for two millennia. As she learns to embrace her own strength, she must also accept…

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Bethany’s Thanksgiving Playlist 2022

November is here, and we have upon us another year, another holiday season. Coming into this season, my heart is tender and yet free and filled with love. Much has changed from the first year I created a list, yet there is a comforting familiarity to the remembering that this holiday provokes within me.  Remember.…

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Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown

Heavy is the head that wears the crown Out front sittin’ pretty laden with responsibility just because I can be The one who’s able to respond to get shit done

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My Prey Is Love

I know next to nothing about hunting, but I know a lot about needlepoint. Many of the hunters I know have trophies on their walls—preserved, marble-eyed animals. I suppose they are a reminder of the many hours spent planning, preparing, hiking, stalking, aiming, shooting, and gutting, then taking the unstuffed body to a taxidermist to…

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What Will You Make This New Year?

It’s a cozy, quiet Sunday morning. I type near the Christmas tree, a sleeping pup curled at my feet and a YouTube fire flickering noiselessly on my TV because my apartment doesn’t have a fireplace. Outside, the world glistens, covered in its first true blanket of snow. These Midwest mornings, the ones that stretch from…

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I Am From

I am from my own imagination From ground scorched with misdirected rage I am from forced silence From underwater screams stuck burning my throat I am from her dark hallow From a lifetime of aching belly I am from both body and mind filled with too many scoops of Mama I am from familial pain…

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Personified

She speaks with tempered wit and out drips tender care from lips that brim with wonder and awe. She walks in patience like the dawn, neither fast nor slow. A rising glow that with time shows all things Both true and clear. She beholds what no one knows, A thought too bold to keep untold,…

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