Sarah M. Wells is the author of The Family Bible Devotional (2018), Pruning Burning Bushes (2012), and a chapbook of poems, Acquiesce, winner of the 2008 Starting Gate Award through Finishing Line Press (2009). Sarah's work has been honored with four Pushcart Prize nominations, and her essays have appeared in the notable essays list in the Best American Essays 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017. She recently completed a memoir-in-essays, American Honey, about marriage and the complications of being a wife, mom, career person, and woman. Sarah is the director of content marketing at Spire Advertising, associate editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, and regular blog contributor at Off the Page, a ministry of Our Daily Bread. She resides in Ashland, Ohio with her husband and three young children.
It’s now been six months since Brandon and I got sick with low grade fevers and fatigue for 14 days, me with shortness of breath that was enough to be thinking about going to the hospital but not enough to feel like I might die. Tests were in short supply and reserved for the very … More My Ongoing Journey with a Suspected Case of COVID
So much has changed in the last six months, but in the year of our Lord and Coronavirus, my dog still sleeps in the cradle of my crossed legs each morning as I drink tea and watch the news with my husband. Our lives used to be busy. There was no breathing room, just constant … More Today I Am 38
In Ohio, our community interactions began to dwindle on March 15 with the closing of restaurants and bars, then dropped off sharply over the course of a week. It is now April 15, a stay-at-home order has been in place since March 23. If the order is lifted on May 1, it will be 40 … More In the Wilderness of Coronavirus
My prescription arrived, finally, five days ago. It’ll be a few months before it fully takes effect, but I’ve already begun to notice a difference, a fog lifting. When you’ve been living off balance for a while, it’s easy to forget what normal feels like until it is, normal, again. A couple of years ago, … More When You’re Off Balance
For Christmas, a friend of ours gave us his 55-gallon fish tank and stand after I mentioned on Facebook that we were considering an aquarium for Henry. It was one of many delightful surprises on Christmas morning. Before we can add fish, we need to make the environment right. Our city water needs to be … More Light and Heat
Henry and I splashed up and down the creek with a dozen other wilderness explorers searching for things worthy of being found. He had a net and a bucket and competitive drive; I had flip flops, a smartphone, and creek walking experience. More than anything, Henry was on a mission to catch minnows. I served … More Things Fall
Just a few days ago, the mornings were ours, and with it the slow rising, the steaming cups of tea, the sky changing shades of red and orange and gold until the orb finally burst over the horizon. And then we had two middle schoolers. It’s day two of school. The dog and I are … More Mornings, Revised
I love the companionship that is born when reading a book set in a familiar place. I’m currently reading Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. It’s a novel that takes place not only in a familiar geographic region but also a nostalgic era of my life, with characters the same age as myself during that … More Local Stories
Most mornings, our alarms go off simultaneously. Sometimes I hit snooze. Sometimes he rolls over for another ten minutes. One of us gets up and fills the kettle. We have two pink chairs in the office that face the Southeastern side of our yard. These days the sun rises between two giant Norway spruce and … More Morning Tea
Today on the way back from a work meeting in Northwest Ohio, we drove through farmland patterned with rows of corn and fallow fields. As we drove, I watched along the road a flock of common birds lift up and land and lift again in a wave, moving together as if performing some long choreographed … More Flocks Fly Together
