“Mommy, will you come with me to the bathroom? You haven’t done it in awhile,” he wheedles, an expert in emotional manipulation at just four years of age. He’s right – I’d just returned from 8 days in Bolivia and hadn’t been available to keep him company in that most fearful of rooms in our…

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My entire life, people have told me how to be me. I suspect this is a very common experience — humanity strives for uniformity, fearing and suffocating diversity. For me, these messages came via “how to be a good Christian female.” In the circles I’ve found myself in for the past 35 years, I’ve been…

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It’s their eyes. That’s what I remember most. Not the smell. Not the dirt and dust stiffening their clothes and hair, crusted on their skin, jammed under their fingernails. I stopped seeing that after awhile. Not the perpetually drippy noses. Not the cheeks on men, women, and babies alike all chapped black. Read the rest…

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