Stories That Matter

How do you write about a father who saved you and scarred you in equal measure? The same hands that taught me to tie on a fishing lures threw a chair through a bank window. This is about capturing someone who was simultaneously the best and worst thing that happened to your childhood...

My dad bought an actual wooden chariot for twenty dollars. We rode it through downtown Colby until my brother's shoelace got caught in the wheel. This is one of a thousand stories about a brilliant, bipolar father who turned our small Kansas town into his personal theater...

How do you write a memoir when the truth might break your family? How do you honor your experience while acknowledging mental illness made your father both villain and victim? For twenty years, I've been trying to answer this question...

Growing up with a bipolar parent taught me to be an emotional weather forecaster, a crisis negotiator, and a student of human resilience. Here are the unexpected lessons that shaped me...

You haven't lived until you've worn a wrestling singlet in public. Now imagine wearing one on Main Street while asking strangers for money. This is how my family's most mortifying fundraiser became our most successful...

How do you move two horses 50 miles with no horse trailer? If you're my dad, you use a flatbed, some rope, and an alarming amount of optimism. This is the story of the most terrifying drive of my childhood—and why I still can't look at a horse trailer without flashbacks...