When The House Was Loud

relationships

  • The Locket, the Clipping, and Olivia

    The apartments Clara lived in weren’t anything special. Inexpensive, boxy, and scattered across town like checkers on a forgotten board. But they were home. Growing up, there were always kids running around the complex..riding bikes, chasing ice cream trucks, playing… Continue reading

  • The Trolls on Her Wall

    Clara did something magical. Not the wand-waving, spellbook kind of magic but the kind that lives in the in-between moments. The kind that only children and old women know how to hold without breaking it. Her apartment was a quiet… Continue reading

  • Where I Felt Safe

    By the time I was in second grade, I had started to sense that I didn’t quite fit. There was already a quiet understanding growing in me…something unspoken, but real. I knew I was adopted, at least in the way… Continue reading

  • Secrets in Plain Sight

    I have a vivid memory of my father’s drinking…one of those crystal-clear snapshots from early childhood that stays tucked just beneath the surface. Before the storms, before I understood what dysfunction was, I remember the beauty of my dad’s soul.… Continue reading

  • Behind the Sanctuary Doors: A Cult in Modern-Day Texas

    My adoption was finalized in 1989. I was already their child, so nothing changed, not really. I was just barely three years old when the papers arrived in the mail. The finishing touch on a deal that had already been… Continue reading

  • The House Built on Shifting Sand

    The Woman Who Raised Me Born 1919 – Sunde, Kvinnherad, Norway The middle child of twelve. The reason I had stability. The reason I survived. I don’t remember a time before Clara. She moved into our home when I was… Continue reading

  • The Sick Live in Picket Fences Too

    You start with the phone book, if you’re lucky enough to know what you’re looking for. But I didn’t have a full name that I was sure of. I had pieces. So I went to the computer lab at the… Continue reading

  • The Search

    He reappeared in my life in my early twenties. I was young. Innocent. Curious. And after everything I’d been through growing up, the secrets, the silence, the aching gaps in the stories, I was sure of one thing: I needed… Continue reading