Editor Picks — Favourite Posts On CRY Last Week
By the open rates on these Editor Picks, I can tell you’re really enjoying this. Good, because we’re enjoying it, too, so much so that I’m personally going to cheat a little bit this week.
KernMy favourite post from last week is Words In A Jar Held Close To The Light by bradley flora. Honestly, some pieces are just written so beautifully that I almost don’t care what the topic is about. Bradley’s prose pinned me to the screen from the very first paragraph.
I wrote this with a pen that’s lived in ten million landfills. Those are alternate reality stories, alternate moments on alternate timelines. Clear crystalline examples of what would happen if I wasn’t holding it in my hands in this here and now.
Then this paragraph made me laugh:
Apologies for the tangent. Unfocused and drifting, I want to point fingers but second-person-tense is just an academic way of gaslighting with permission.Honourable Mention
Anyways, I know we’re supposed to pick one, but it’s my publication so I’m breaking the rules. My other favourite piece from last week is Just Say No, It’s As Easy As It Sounds by Odettaafraser. I love this piece because it’s both personal and practical and written with just the right amount of attitude.
Favourite excerpt:
Ultimately, our voices are our tools on the battlefield of life, and for a semi-introvert like me, perfecting my voice required missed opportunities, quiet, preparatory practice and unabandoned assertiveness, because I am naturally a listener. Therefore, I had to learn how to get a word in edgewise when I realized that people were not as accommodating of me as I was of them. They would not let me speak, so I had to find ways to insert my opinion without shame, and so I learned how to value myself enough to know that what I had to say mattered, and therefore, I said it.
Safia
My absolute favourite post from last week is Feeling the Significance of Our Traumas, Big And Small by Melissa Steussy. Wow. What a powerful and vulnerable piece about trauma, addiction and searching for freedom.
Melissa pulls you into her world with descriptions that make you feel like you’re standing right beside her.
Such as with this excerpt:
I drank to rid the feelings of inferiority. I understood that hole in my soul from a young age and wondered why I was different. I wondered why God would let me live with these strangers. A mother and her boyfriends who were abusive and mean. A mother who was herself an alcoholic and when drunk could be funny or jovial or a switch would flip and she was just as mean or delirious as her partners.
I also really felt this part:
I’ve had a deep longing to feel loved and nurtured, but I also am the first one to push it away because I can’t trust it. My childhood affects my adult life on a daily basis and I am ready to be free.
Editor Picks — Favourite Posts On CRY Last Week was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
