selaf

We figured out that my grandmother's relatively recent ancestors enslaved my grandfather's relatively recent ancestors in Virginia and the Carolinas. That was...fun. We also figured out that one of the aforementioned grandfather's enslaved ancestors wasn't half-white like we had always… Read More

The Great Ocean Road in Australia is a favorite of mine. As an Alaskan, I feel like all of Alaska is absolutely glorious to behold.

As a pale person with genetically horrendous dark circles, who has tried every last color corrector/undereye brightener there is (not an exaggeration), go darker. A Sephora employee suggested this to me last year, and I was skeptical as heck, but it works. I use dark circle color… Read More

My god, all of this. I found a photo of my grandmother right after she joined the Air Force at 18. She has a huge smile on her face, the happiest I have ever seen her by far--I've never seen her smile like that, not ever. She didn't want to be a mother. She wanted a long, storied… Read More

I was 14 I think, clearly in the middle of my most awkward stage of life. I was also a baby lesbian who had been craving a butch aesthetic since preschool, but my extremely religious parents believed that “hair is a woman’s glory.” So one day, angry at my parents for something, I… Read More

I was diagnosed with Major Somnolence Disorder at 23, after a lifetime of my debilitating lethargy being blamed on my depression. It got to the point that I was falling asleep every day in the middle of work. Stimulants saved my life and are the only way I’m able to maintain friendships,… Read More

The faces of the dummies they use in CPR classes are based on L'Inconnue de la Seine which was probably the death mask of a random young Jane Doe.

When I was four, my parents told me that my great-grandmother got lung cancer and died (in her eighties) because she smoked for a hot second as a teenager during her rumspringa. Also at that age, that my great-uncle lost his leg because he smoked. So I went around believing until… Read More

Sleepwalking on Thanksgiving. I crashed into a table, fell weird, and broke my foot. I was 18 and the urgent care doctor couldn’t believe it—he thought for sure I had been drunk.

I've always called this thing my "yellow blanket" even though it also has equal amounts of green and pink. It's been with me since birth, through lots of unrest and what felt like constant moving as a kid. I've always done this thing with it where I knit my fingers through its crocheted… Read More