Heartbreak, Loss, and Writing in Gmail: It’s Always Something

By Rae Pagliarulo

This past summer, I attended a week-long writing workshop in Austria. It was a scary prospect – I had not written, at least not in a way that I felt was substantive, or generative, or serious (whatever that means) since 2020. Between unexpectedly losing my dad, the pandemic, broken friendships, mental health struggles, and a beautiful man who would not stop breaking my heart, I had a hard enough time getting from one day to the next. 

Amazingly, I stayed committed to m...