Alaina Leary

All I wanted, most days, was a cute apartment with big windows, sheer curtains billowing in the breeze, where I could sit comfortably and read a book.

I told Winnie that I was queer before I told anyone human—late at night, in my room, after writing it down in my journal. “You won’t stop loving me if I’m gay, will you?” I asked him. He replied with his signature loud meow.

Moving can be a traumatic experience. We often forget how many remnants of the past we hold onto—whether intentionally or accidentally, just because we put a letter away in a drawer and forgot about it.

"Writing about trauma or difficult experiences doesn’t repair that trauma,” said Melanie. “It doesn’t make it go away. But I kept hearing what a transformative thing it was for [the memoirists] to shape these stories into something that they could be proud of.”

In the aftermath of my rape, I became an activist for ending rape culture. And I quickly found that even in feminist circles, disability was often left out of the conversation completely.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of th

The education system isn’t designed for students like me. From as early as preschool up through my master’s degree, I struggled in a traditional classroom setting for a few reasons, and needed to adapt my own methods of surviving education.

Doniga Markegard teaches at a wilderness school instructor, and it’s important to her that her own kids learn about nature and wildlife.

I have a lifetime of momless moments ahead of me, but I’ve prepared for those since her death. What I hadn’t prepared for was that I’d have to celebrate one of those milestones on a day that I typically spend in mourning.

I’ve walked the line between visibly and invisibly disabled my entire life.