Alaina Leary

When Macey and I planned our engagement photos, I knew I wanted my sparkly, bright lavender cane to be in them.

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.

When I was in seventh grade, I logged onto my MySpace blog and wrote a short blog post about being gay and afraid to come out to my family and frie

My sexual assault is the main reason my girlfriend and I didn’t celebrate the love-infested holiday for the first six years of our relationship. Last Valentine’s Day, a month after we celebrated seven years together, was our first time embracing the holiday as our own.

It’s helpful if you talk to your disabled loved ones to see what works for them. My family and friends have always been great at figuring out accessibility.

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.

"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.”