Good morning friends!! I am starting a new thing here and I’m really excited about it. I run a page on Facebook called Running from Hell with El and it is my flagship, my baby. It’s where all of this (gesturing) started. I also help run another page called Rebel Thriver, which is dedicated to helping survivors of abuse thrive. For these Facebook pages, I create a lot of posters and pictures that include my original writing. From now on, [...]
“I’m going to make it.” That was my mantra during the first marathon I ran. I felt unequal to the task, and yet I knew the course and the hills and the pain in my own body would not stop me. Even if it killed me, I would cross that finish line. The same mantra got me through writing a novel. At 2:33 p.m., May 22, 2012, I typed “The End” on the last page of Ripple, my first novel. [...]
I glance at my ankle and rub my fingers over the protruding bones. Two cuts divide the front of my lower tibia from the crowded bone depot where the ligaments and the tendons wrap and curl from the lower tibia to the 26 bones that make up my right foot. Last Thursday a closet door tipped over and slammed into my ankle. The swelling from the collision of wood and foot has gone down and the bruising has changed from [...]
It was 6 o’clock. Ben sat at the kitchen table in his pajamas. As punishment for throwing rocks and biting another kid, he had spread mulch outside and then received an early bath. I glanced at my husband and said, “I am going for a run. You got the phone? Dr. Myers should call on my cell phone.” My almost bald, still-handsome, barrel-chested man nodded at me and asked, “You told her it’s time? Are you okay?” I shook my [...]
This afternoon, I walked away from the lunch table at my son’s school and a woman’s voice followed me. “Is that your son?” I held the back of my hand up. Was it rude of me? I didn’t care. Not one more word. I had heard enough. She had already tried to talk to me and I had ignored her, this Spanish “lunch lady” with the wide cheekbones and the light in her brown eyes. I had already heard about [...]