Tag: childhood trauma
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Grading Their Final Papers–and the Semester Ends!
My students are now done with me. They handed in their final papers today, both classes–Literature and Contemporary Issues, and a Nonfiction Writing Workshop–and now can go on their merry way to sweat over other essays and papers and exams, oh my… But, I’m done. Oh yes, I have to grade the papers, and that’s…
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The Tracer Bullets
The battle between the Sandinista and Contra soldiers broke out in a valley just below us. Michelle and I were walking to a village in the northern mountains of Nicaragua. It was dusk. The road was more a ledge on the side of the mountain. Just over the lip, in a small dip in the woods,…
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Why I’m better off living in a war zone
Three months ago I had a psychotic attack, one brought on by childhood trauma and a heavy batch of manic depression. It was horrible. My family, I put them through hell one more time. Since then, I have been writing myself out of the madness. This blog has been a place for me to think…
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Nicaragua Was Not My First War
In 1969, when I was seven, we made a trip to El Salvador for the summer. My parents had plans: they considered moving to my mother’s home country, for financial reasons. Life was cheaper in Central America, even for a financially strapped gringo family. Mamá still had kin in the country. We could build a…
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A Check-Up at the Home Asylum
It’s now been two months since my psyche broke with reality, on Christmas morning. I started feeling better about three, four weeks ago; at least, I started functioning again. My family and I know this pattern all too well, one that began when I turned seventeen, almost forty years ago. In my first journal, in…