“My mom probably won’t call the cops,” I thought as I pulled up parallel to my parents’ house late one evening in 2006. I had turned off the headlamps on my car as I got close, like I had seen in so many movies. I would have shut off...

“Can I get you a soda?” Don, my (then) father-in-law asked me. I was standing in Don’s vacation trailer, Dan (my future ex-husband) and Mike (my future ex-brother in law), sitting on a couch nearby. Dan, Mike, and I had driven down to see Don and to relax for...

I was sitting in my Prius in the parking lot of the bank I worked for in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. It was late November in 2010 and not cold enough yet to snow: the dark clouds stretching across the sky that afternoon spat down cold, choppy droplets of...

On February 13, 2016, Basil and I were getting ready to go to the movies when my phone lit up with text messages. I don’t usually get a ton of text messages and when I saw so many popping up at once, I was worried something was wrong. It turned...

For the last year, I have been consistently working out five to six days a week, for at least 30 minutes a day, thanks to Daily Burn. Of all the ways my life has changed since I moved to Ohio, this one has surprised me just as much as...

I was sitting in a Starbucks in Marlton, NJ. It was 2009 and I had just moved to New Jersey six months prior. It was my third move to a third state in three years. I and the seven other store managers in my district were kicking off a...

I was sitting on a Southwest Airlines flight in early 2004 between Phoenix and Los Angeles when I was jostled in my seat by some mild turbulence. I looked out the small window in my row as I felt something unfamiliar creep from my stomach towards my throat: fear....

“I was thinking about moving to Buffalo,” I told my father. “No. No, you cannot move to Buffalo,” Dad said. It was unlike him to refuse me a dialogue about an idea, so I immediately knew how much he didn’t like this one. I talked to him on my...