Family+Love Archives

Cutting Ties

By : Kat Hewitt October 12, 2020 No Comment

I miss my mom when I eat angel hair pasta or hear Martina McBride playing. I miss her when my friends talk about spending time with their moms. I cried the other day at my best friend's house when her mom asked us if we would help her set up for a dinner party. I stood in their kitchen with tears running down my face because that was something my mom always used to ask me to help with. My mom and I are working on our relationship. In the first fifteen years of my life, we were best friends. I loved her more than anything in the world. I thought she was perfect, flawless, invincible. It’s a really strange feeling when you grow up and realize that your parents

My Mother: A Haunting

By : Spandana Janapati September 9, 2020 Comments Off

my mother is all silk skin and broken knuckles. when i was younger, i would count the wrinkles on her fingers and the lines across her palm. i wanted to know why she had more lines than i did. i never figured it out. my mother is all soft rain and wet grass. her hair hangs to the base of her neck and her smile stretches to the left more than to the right. i think mine stretches more to the right. my mother doesn’t like things out of order. every nail polish, every empty shoe box, every ripped open envelope has its place. even people had a place. she taught me the importance of silence, the value behind a closed door and i had practiced so much that even

One Foot In The Closet

By : Becca Levitin September 9, 2020 Comments Off

“God,” I thought, “I really wish I could share my acceptance into the Writer’s Cohort with my family.” I had already told everyone else important to me. As with all the happenings in my life, I told my lovely partner first, who I owe both my morning laughter and my bedtime stories to. He was delighted to hear the news and will probably be just as delighted to read of his mention in my first, but certainly not last piece for MyUmbrella. Next, I told my therapist and friends, whose resounding praise still rings in my ears as I sit and write. Two important people are somehow always missing when I try to tell the story of my queer experience: my parents. My parents were born in 65’ in the

Francine’s “Partner” Experience

By : Francine Canelo September 9, 2020 Comments Off

As of my senior year, I’ve been with my current partner, so almost four years. I call him my partner because I’m bisexual, and one of my preferences regarding pronouns is using terms such as “partner” instead of boyfriend, or fiancé, or husband. If I were dating a woman, she would be my partner, too. For me, this is deeper than inclusion: it’s a safety net. To understand why this is important to me, I have to recollect on my experiences in high school and middle school. I never came out, I had always had relationships with both women and men, and everyone who knew me knew that gender was not one of my preferences. It was a strange, unceremonial event: one day I started dating my best friend, and

How Moving out Helped me Heal

By : Al Pim July 19, 2020 Comments Off

Living in a toxic household comes with many things. You feel like you can never trust anyone; like you can love or be loved; like you don’t deserve anything. You feel stuck. You try to find places and things to make you feel safe. For me, it was writing. I could create any world I wanted where the hero would face the same problems I did but always came through at the end. The main character became my role model. She would go through everything I went through: abusive parents, a toxic household, feeling left out at school, being in the closet and, many other things. Unlike me, my main character would be able to overcome these obstacles. It was something that I longed for but couldn’t do. I felt

Surviving a Queer High School Relationship from Teen to Adult

By : Sam Weiner July 18, 2020 Comments Off

The mainstream narrative surrounding high school relationships is usually to break up when both of the individuals go to college. It is hard enough transitioning from being a child to a young adult without outside pressure to break up with the person who has been your support system. This is especially hard for gay couples because often times, as was the case with me, our partner is the only person who fully understands what we are going through as a queer person in society. I met my girlfriend when we were fifteen, we started dating when we were sixteen, and we are now twenty-four and going strong. Both of our parents accepted our relationship, but they would constantly tell us that we needed to “find ourselves” in college. Sometimes I

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Category: Family+Love